I’m not sure I’m going to write here anymore.

When I joined xanga and started writing here, it wasn’t just “to write” – I do plenty of that in my paper journal. 

When I wrote here, it was for the sense of community, the back-and-forth exchange.  It was like coming to a campfire and sitting around it with friends, talking about our lives and supporting each other.

I think xanga still is that.  It’s just that my own particular “circle” of people that I read on here keeps dwindling as people go off to blog elsewhere, so it kind of defeats my own reasons for having this site in the first place.  It makes me sad to lose this.  Yes, there are still a handful of you that are still around and who I know read & comment… but its not quite the same.  It feels strange to write for only 2 or 3 people.  Like I said, I have my paper journal for that.

I’m not leaving xanga.  It’s just that I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that this place isn’t what it used to be, for me.  That, coupled with the constant ups and downs of the tendonitis in my wrists, and I think its time I stop trying to hold on to something that is no longer.

When I left high school six and a half years ago and the few friends that I had all went off to different universities, I consoled myself by thinking that this was just temporary; for Christmas and summer we would get together, and when we were done university we would hang out all the time just like before.  When Christmases and summers started going by with each of us doing our own thing (I always waited hopefully for them to invite me to things just like the old days.  I could never do the inviting myself; didn’t know how), I thought well we are all really busy with school and they must have a lot of new friends (I passed through 6 going on 7 years of university without making a single new friend) but certainly when we’re all done our degrees and everyone moves back to Toronto it will be just like the old days.

It seems to have taken me 6 years to realize that that hasn’t happened and won’t ever actually happen. I knew that we would change and grow, but I didn’t know we would grow away from each other.  The hardest part of it is that I feel like its them that have grown away from me; that I’m still in the very same place.  When I talk to my friend Laura, for example, the only one from high school with whom I’m still in relatively close contact, we always pick up precisely where we left off, even if we haven’t spoken for 6 months.  I feel like if they were like me (ie. didn’t know how to make friends), that they wouldn’t have grown away from me and they would have still kept inviting me to fun things like they used to.  I feel like if only I knew how to do that (invite them to things), we wouldn’t have grown apart.

Well.  I did invite them to recitals and concerts, but they rarely ever came.  Which I didn’t understand… if someone I knew was giving a solo recital of something I wouldn’t want to miss that for anything!  But maybe its just because I have such a smaller circle of people, that its easier to be there for all of their moments.

I guess the point of that story was that it kind of feels the same here at xanga.  It took me such effort to share and make friends here, and it wouldn’t have happened without the reciprocal exchanges.  When people leave and go off and blog somewhere else (or not at all), or delete their sites as if they never existed, and don’t seem to mind that leaving xanga means they’re leaving the ability to keep reading me, also… well, it makes me very sad.  I know I shouldn’t take it personally and I try not to, but its hard.

I still read daily those of you who I’ve known for years, and I don’t plan on every stopping that.  I don’t always comment, but if you see my footprints there, it means I’m reading everything.

And I’ve already met 3 of you in person and spoken with even more on the phone, and I plan on meeting all of you in person at some point in my life.  I’ve always known I would travel a lot (hence, the “canadienne errante”), and I know I will make my way to all of your corners of the world eventually.

I am on Facebook, which is where I post most of my pictures nowadays, and status updates aren’t the same as blogging, but if any of you want to find me there and you haven’t yet, please message me and I will tell you where to look.

This isn’t really a goodbye, so don’t be sad… I will still be here, always reading, even if I’m not blogging much myself.