Thursday, September 06, 2007

Some Thoughts on Blogging

As you'll notice by looking closely at the date these entries were written, I haven't written a thing here in months. This, despite wanting to "get some stuff down before I forget it." I've discovered that maintaining a web site, or even a blog, is an easy thing to put at the bottom of a list. Especially when it regards material that is no longer current in your life.

It is now the beginning of September 2007. About a month or two ago, the last members of my incoming Peace Corps Guyana group returned to the states, trickling back one by one in the style Peace Corps prefers. It was a milestone that produced mixed emotions in me. I felt a little bit of sorrow and regret, since part of me wished I could have made the entire two years with my friends. I also felt a little bit of relief that I wasn't in Guyana for that long. I felt happy for my friends who finally get to see their own friends and family again. I felt disconnected from them, and from the whole experience, as it fades back into the past and becomes increasingly irrelevant in my life.

(As a side note, I am not entirely happy with how Peace Corps handles COS. It seems like it would be much more meaningful if all volunteers wrapped up their affairs and left at the same time, right after the COS conference, and then spent a couple days saying goodbye in the same place where they had their Staging, two years before. It would be great closure for all.)

During the times when I feel a little disappointed that I didn't stay in Guyana, I just try to think clearly about the experience. I wasn't happy, I wasn't healthy, and I wasn't into it. There were several reasons for that, some of which have been discussed at great length in this blog. But I have a few more experiences that might help clarify exactly what happened to me in New Amsterdam, and why I ended up being sent home.

The following five posts are meant to wrap up this blog by filling in some missing pieces I didn't get time to express, or left out for other reasons. I wanted to write a lot about New Amsterdam, interesting things I'd seen there, people and places; but I am beginning to see now that there are things I will never get a chance to write, in this blog or elsewhere. There are simply too many details. But as an author, I console myself in knowing those details are not gone, and I can expect to see them show up again in my fiction and my memories. I won't be writing in this blog anymore, unless the web site needs an occasional edit just to stay current. I think this blog is a self-sufficient, complete entity now, and it can do it's work without my interference, and that is to tell my story to other volunteers, past and future. I hope you find these last entries entertaining. And please bear with me; my memory of these events isn't as crystal-clear as it once was.

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