Live laugh love? More like grow, learn, cringe
Life is cyclical
I made my header photo 1over 20 years ago for one of (many) previous blogs. I found the photo on the internet, probably using Altavista. I reversed and doubled it. I wrote over it in Paint using a free font called Cobb, which was a knock-off font of the handwriting on the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1991 album Gish.2
For at least one other Paint-made image, I used Lansbury, which resembled (but was not the same as) the font on the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1995 album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sandess. It was named for Angela Lansbury because it was the font used on her TV show Murder, She Wrote.
These header photos are far from the only scrap that I kept. I used to barf out long-winded journal entries in a section I called Symbolistic White Walls after the Matthew Good Band song.
Here are the images and background I used:
I wrote 62 of them between December 1998 and May 2003. In the last one, I mentioned that I was starting a Diaryland.
I hoped to share some of them, but I read a few and cringed so hard that my stomach started cramping. I was already attending university and dating the person I married by the time I stopped writing, legally an adult, but what a kick in the ego.
How do people do this? How do they make books and articles and movies and songs and just put them out there forever? Who was I trying so hard to convince how ~quirky~ and ~introspective~ I was? On the other hand, I suppose it was a huge privilege to be vulnerable and share my feelings freely like that. (Spoiler, I was kind of a jerk!) (Maybe still am!)3
I will share some tidbits eventually, but I’m also thinking about I will feel about this Substack in 2043. If I gaze hard enough into my navel, eventually I should come through and see daylight on the other side… right?
Note: since deleted after this was written. Life moves at you fast!
Smashing Pumpkins fonts for every album : SmashingPumpkins (reddit.com)
Not looking for validation!