I don't know why I'm even typing this but I stumbled upon my old blog after such a long absence. I do not intend to maintain it but I do wish to make my first post in roughly three years. It's quite strange to look back on "dramatic" periods of my life which I now consider rather mundane. Such is life. Such is the passing of time.
My name is Joel. I am 19 years of age, soon to be 20 years of age. I have a steady job which allows me small luxuries in life. I have a steady partner who I love. I no longer consider myself to have a turbulent life. In many ways I have mellowed and grown old and in other ways I am still the child who began this blog seven years ago as an outlet for all the demons and agonies of an adolescent growing up in, what he deemed to be, a cruel and unjust world.
I won't lie to my beloved Internet. I can't with honesty say that I'm much different. I see the world in a more adult-like light but like everyone else with my predisposition I tend to fall beneath the crests. If I had to say what the biggest difference in my life would be - it would be that I have a security and stability my former self lacked. The most bizarre thing, I find, is that when I started this blog I had all those delusions of youth that people actually cared about what I thought. I was content to receive a couple of replies on my posts when they were originally uploaded on MySpace (this blog was originally intended to be an archive for my previous blog posts when I deleted the aforementioned website). With this in mind, it seems fitting that the majority of these were not even aimed at anyone reading in particular. They have always been for myself only whether I realised it then or not. I have always found writing cathartic. Despite not being good at the technicalities of writing, I like to think that I have an interesting narrative and a colourful vocabulary.
I know that the theme of this blog entry has been adulthood and maturity so it would be an interesting time to note that this blog was originally titled "Innocence Moratorium". I had taken the idea from an album (a damn good one, too) and it roughly conveys an idea coined by a Japanese psychologist. The muzai moratorium refers to young adults in Japan who refuse to take control of their lives and grow up. I would like to believe that I am finally at a stage in life that I can renounce my own moratorium on innocence.
As ever, this entry has been filled to the brim with incomplete thoughts and stunted ideas. I would hope this post is the most mature thing I have managed to vomit in the past seven years. I would also hope that were I to return to this again in another three years I would be able to laugh off the naivete of a twenty year old as I can do now.
Yours sincerely,
Joel.
