I think at this point Blogger is completely obsolete but it's nice to look back at 6.5 years-worth of posts here, the very first being on November 28, 2010, when I was a junior in college, studying abroad in Florence, Italy. The picture I posted that day is of a bread platter at a restaurant in Rome. I remember that day so clearly. Our Michelangelo art class led by a grouchy mustachioed old man—he was thin and wiry and narrow-shouldered—had traveled to Rome for a two days. The day we arrived—actually it was night—we had a private tour of the Sistine Chapel. The day after we ran around Rome frantically trying to cram in as many Michelangelo-related stops as possible before heading back to Florence: the Campidoglio, St. Peter's, Santa Maria deli Angeli. And then finally, in the afternoon, we stopped for lunch somewhere, and the first thing they brought out was this platter full of hot, steaming bread—all different types: breadsticks, rolls, sliced baguette. In my head I remember the platter resembling a flower arrangement, each thing artfully placed, but when I look at the photo now I see that the bread was haphazardly strewn. Time and memory distort even the most trivial of things.

And I remember how nervous I felt then, at that meal, when the bread platter arrived. I was so hungry, yet so fearful of what I might to do to myself. I started this blog when I was at a very low point: abroad in one of the most romanticized cities in the world, and yet completely depleted of life. Starving myself. Unhappy. Lonely.

A lot has changed since then, but I'm not ashamed of that time of my life. It is very much a part of me, and I know, when I look at that picture, exactly what it meant to me at that time, and what it means to me now, even though those meanings have shifted. Nothing here is literal. Personal significance is embedded in everything—every quote, every photo, every word. A compendium of buried meanings.

Two years ago, I started working at a small magazine—not exactly a traditional magazine. I would call us a story production company. I have learned a lot about how to tell a story; my instincts for what constitutes good writing have certainly been sharpened. Yet working here has also made me, perhaps excessively, self-conscious of my own writing—so much so that when I sit down to write, I begin to criticize myself before I've even put words down on the page. I kill any thought, any idea that arises. I demean even the quietest whispers of my own mind, constantly.

As a remedial measure, I began writing "morning pages" a few months ago. This is a practice from Julia Cameron's The Artist Way. I'd tried it now and again, after hearing about it back in college, but I'd never abided by it as a strict daily practice. But after months of being exasperated by my own inability to produce any work, and by my lack of confidence to try, I knew I needed an exercise small and trivial—but consistent—enough that would help release some of the inhibitions, mental and emotional, blocking my way. My morning routine now takes much longer than it has ever taken, and consequently I am the last one in the office, but it has all been worth it. The goal all along was to turn "morning pages" into a compulsion, and now it is.

Begin small, and up the stakes as you go.

I've lately been inspired by the blog of film director David Lowery, and this cross-section of David Sedaris' journals, to write on this blog more often. The writing here is slightly more polished than that  of my morning pages, but it is still rough and inchoate, which is not a bad thing, I think. I like Lowery's blog as a chronicle of his process, and perhaps this can serve as that too. David Sedaris practices sharply wrought observation and narration in his journals—something that does not come naturally to me as a chronicler, but that I want to practice. I tend to be chronicler of feelings, rarely writing a sequence of events, but recapitulating how I felt in the wake of those events.

But sometimes those feelings can become more powerful when not stated so explicitly: left intact in the action, the dialogue, the silence. Leave them buried. Say what you see, and say no more.