FOUR DIGITS

This will be my thousandth post, according to my blogger dashboard.

Hot damn.

I remember starting this. I'd just come home from CTY in the summer of '08, and I had an internship with a venture capital fund, and I spent most of my days trying to figure out how much a clinical trial costs. That was literally my job- finding out how much clinical trials cost. For three weeks.

It was super.

At that same time, I was in the National American Miss state pageant (Junior Teen division), about which I lied to all of my friends and colleagues.

Venture Capitalist: So how was your weekend?

Me: Oh it was cool... I went on a trip... A college trip! I visited... UVA?

The pageant had an effect on me. At the very least, it drove home the point in my head that I am a spotlight-seeking attention-craving person, which is fine by me. It was about time I stopped denying it, anyway.

And then I read this article in Wired about Julia Allison and internet fame and I thought, "Well, I can do that." And I started a blog. This one.

So it was all an attention thing to begin with. And those beginning posts were awful. I had no idea what to say.

"Here's a youtube video I found of a lemur!"

"I'm only a little bit ashamed to be watching the Teen Choice Awards? I'm not sure whether I'm an entertainment blogger?"

"I bought shoes!"

"I'm in a bad mood. Oh wait, jk. I'm not wearing underwear."

That was my first month in a nutshell. And somewhere between then and now I think I've found my voice, and developed it quite a bit, and now here I am.

I feel so much more confident. Maybe that would have happened anyway. Correlation does not imply causality, after all. But I can't help but attribute a lot of my personality to this experience.

Example: I've always been a really awkward person. Ask anyone who's known me long enough (or anyone who's met me at all) and they will confirm this fact. But there was a point over the course of writing this blog when I realized that my awkward moments would be entertaining for someone who didn't have to endure them. And suddenly, the first thought I have after randomly changing my clothes in the middle of a grocery store* is "Well, that'll make a good 'Doing weird things in public' tag"

Ironically, although half the reason I started doing this was to get people to notice me, I've stopped caring so much what people think. The blog (and its readership) has become a trusted friend, and I'm going to tell you everything, no matter who's going to judge me for it. I don't care.

It helps that most of my readers are good friends anyway, but I know there are people out there, who I've never met, who read this with some consistency, and I feel like I can let them in.

It's made me honest.

And if I'm honest here, I might as well be honest in the real world too. Otherwise, what if I said something to one person, and then contradicted it over here, and then the person read about my contradiction? That would be awkward, and not in an "awkward anecdote of the day" kind of way, and so I'd rather avoid it.

So... I'm real with people.

Then there was this spring, and there was this summer, and I moved... and that marked the creation of the "mentally unstable clara" tag. I had so many nervous breakdowns, and you got to read about most of them. I'm almost proud of that- I'd never been one for appearing vulnerable. Who wants to do that?

But I did. I am vulnerable, and I revealed it over here, several times. And the world didn't crumble.

And who knew I'd love writing so much? I'd always been a math nerd, or a science nerd, or some other kind of distinctly non-english nerd. And here I go, writing away like some kind of... writer.

(Although the coherency of that last sentence should be proof that I am most certainly overestimating my abilities.)

In any case, whether I'm actually good at this or not, I like it a lot.

And so, dear readers, however many of you that there may be, thanks for reading. You guys keep me accountable, and I don't know what I would do if I didn't have this ridiculous compulsion to blog every day, at least once.

It's been a good thousand posts.

Here's looking forward to the next thousand.

Love always,
Clara

*I should explain this.

So, yesterday I went bowling with an assorted crowd, and it was really hot in Bern. I was wearing a jacket, a white flowy tanktop, and a black tanktop under the white one. So Chris and Danny and Robert and I walked up to the tram stop to meet Oren, and I took off my jacket. And I was still hot, and so someone suggested I take off my top-layer tanktop, which doesn't seem like that bad an idea. So I take it off and I put it in my purse.

About fifteen minutes later I decide I don't like the look of wearing jeans and a black wifebeater... I don't know. It just didn't suit me. So we went into the grocery store to buy red bull or something, and I was standing in line by myself (because we were racing, obviously). And I decide to put my other tanktop back on, so I take it out of my purse, set down my red bull(s) (don't judge) and pull it over my head.

The woman standing in line behind me gave me this bewildered look. I sort of smiled, in a "oh, you know how it is" kind of way, although I'm fairly certain she had no idea "how it is".

It was awkward. It was a weird thing done in public. And I blogged about it.