My Last Xanga Post Ever.

I started this Xanga on September 18, 2003, six years ago exactly with a really lame post on Hurricane Isabel, barely into my freshman year at U of Delaware, a good school with a wonderful Catholic campus ministry in state I have not set foot in in almost two years.

This blog has seen me though the exponential growth of my faith, in which I went from "the mountain top" to the valley, where God nurtured roots that go deeper now than I can really even tell, except on the rare occasion I'm really paying attention and He shows me something I can't ignore.  From faith being something I put on, like an overcoat, to the very core of my being, like the re-barb in a building.

This blog weathered my late-adolescent angst and melodrama  -- utterly and comically sincere -- as well as my post-adolescent, self-flagellating melodrama -- more tongue in cheek, thank goodness.  Reading posts from six years ago, I laugh, wonder how that's the same person, and marvel that I had any friends.

This blog kept tabs on me as I awkwardly worked my way through college, feeling very out of place almost everywhere except the basement of the Oratory and perhaps NCSC meetings, suddenly started to turn into a real person during senior year, skipped to the convent to be my own person, and whirled around and ended up in ACE, where I felt like myself for the first time (the fruition of a seed planted, I think, in the aforementioned basement).

This blog bore the brunt of the longest, darkest year of my life, in which I struggled with a lot more than I made public because -- honestly -- if you knew half of what was going on in my head, you'd have called an ambulance.  Or an exorcist.  Either might have been appropriate.

This blog was the forum for many a rant on everything from Barak Obama to people who won't give Lord of the Rings a chance, written with everything from outrage to a wink.

This blog, and Xanga as a whole, were the space in which a lot of drama went down.  Much more in the early days, but a few memorable incidents in the last couple of years.  A couple of relationships saw there final demise here, or perhaps more accurately, their demise was undeniably announced.

This blog morphed, over the course of six years, from a cyber social space with comments and links and jabs and chuckles flying about, to the truest journal I've ever had.  I've kept it regularly, excluding some breaks, for longer than I've kept up any other practice but Catholicism (and actually, I was confirmed about seven months after starting this site, so even that is arguable). I have poured my heart and soul onto these pages, appreciating both the relative secrecy of it and the knowledge that someone else would probably read what I wrote, even if no one ever said anything about it.  Knowing there was an audience kept me honest, because I once found it much easier to lie to myself than to other people, and I knew very well I was dramatic, and I needed the check.  Xanga was my perfect outlet.

Things, though, change.

The fact is, I outgrew Xanga a very long time ago.  It's become an annoyance.  There are the technical issues -- something about the posting interface bothers me, weird little kinks happen with some regularity, and I don't like the way the page even looks.  More significantly, Xanga is trying to remake itself in the image of MySpace and Facebook, and that's just fine.  But I've been asked a few too many times if I'd like to change my homepage, or if perhaps I'd enjoy Pulse, or if I'd like to post a widget for 500 credits (No.  I wouldn't.  Leave me alone.).  I don't need it.  I just want a place to write.

So I'm moving to a new site and closing the Xanga shop.

To my readers:  You are more than welcome to follow me.  I will not be creeped out.  It IS the internet, after all; I can't expect total privacy, and if you've been following the show this long... well, you might as well continue.  Feel free to lurk.  I've grown up enough that I don't need the check anymore.  For all I know, I am the only one who will ever see this new site, and that's fine.  You're also still free to comment, if you ever feel moved to.  Whatever.

With that, farewell, Xanga.  It's been real.  I'm off.