stories about running away

She can't even remember if she's used this title before, so she'll use it anyway.

It's not the internet I miss, I don't think. This girl I met at work, an Indian girl whose name I forget, only said two things that I remember. The first was about the internet, how much she missed it, how it was her life. She was one of those girls who's bubbly and cheerful and pretty and has everything going for her except for the fact that she lives out of her Myspace and discussion forums and band websites and communities.

It's not the connection to the internet that's bad, it's how she can't really deal with real people.

The second interesting thing she said was, in justification for her household not only having a chef but a butler who cooked for the chef, that labour is very cheap in the developing world. Yes, replied the room full of left-wing fundraisers. Yes, it is.

I don't want to be one of those people who can't interact with things in 2d. I don't want to freak out and whinge whenever I can't get online but my god I hate not blogging. I'll put it this way - as therapeutic as keeping a diary is, and as glad as I am that I've finally managed to get into that habit, I firmly and completely believe that writing without a reader is talking to yourself.

You can't write without a reader, you can't just write to nobody. Anyone who writes a diary with no intention of it ever being read is lying, in my opinion. Ask yourself if you'd burn your diaries when you died. If the answer's no then you want someone to read them. If the answer's yes then you've proved me wrong and it's obviously just me that cannot abide the thought of not being heard.

Sometimes, it scares me to think it, it feels like blogging is the main form of communication in my life. At uni, when I blog everyday, no matter what happens and how I feel it'll all be sorted, neatly pinned down into words by the time I go to sleep. As if everything I forgot to say that day can be said online instead.

It scares me into talking more often, to having real conversations even when I don't want to because I don't want to be sucked into that kind of relationship with the internet. If it's making me open up to people that can't be bad. But still, this feeling of uneasiness when my safety net is taken away.

On the plus side, the realisation of the last six weeks' separation from broadband has made me realise something. The only thing that keeps me sane is this, not just blogging but writing, somehow pinning it down and forcing it out and getting myself sorted. I have to do it, can't stop doing it. Sometimes it's a ritual, sometimes it's a compulsion, as long as it gets done I'll get to sleep at night.

Decisions have been made. Next time someone asks me what I'll do with my life I'll tell them I will be a writer. That is where my energies will go for now. I can't be done with deciding between dance classes and film studies and politics modules when all I really know how to do, all I'm good at and all that helps is writing. Realism, I suppose.

And the story. The story (stories?) that I started when I was still at school. People like Barony and Costa and Nathaniel who I never mention on here and I suppose only Meffie, Emilie, Stacey and Laura would really remember. They're coming out of whatever fictional cupboard I put them into because I can't keep staring up my own arse any longer.

I need something to write, something big, a project. I need to see if I can do this, if I can do it well. So I will do it, and later will look back and see how I did.

Wish us luck.