NB: the posts for the next two months were composed but not published at the time.

scam!
Holy shit, was closing this weblog just a scam?

I'm finding it hard to get away from this form of expression. Here. Just putting out what I'm thinking, what's on my mind.

But then why the whole ruse of starting a new weblog and ending this one? Why direct everyone over there and asking them to unlink this page? Why not just start the new weblog for the people I don't want coming here, and continue this weblog for the people who already know it's here? Why did I need that separation?

There's not an easy answer. Part of it may be that having found this community, I'm finding myself being self-conscious and self-censoring, so get rid of it, veil it, and see what really comes out on these pages. But that doesn't hold because some people might come back and find this. I still go back to weblogs that have purportedly ended to see if they're still down.

Part of it may be personality and psychology; running away from people, pushing them away for fear that they might be exposed to the truth about me. What truth about me? What the hell am I talking about? It might not be totally honest because of freaky psychology, but it's been as honest as I get.

Part of it may be the distillation of my personality into varying components. That other weblog is the palpable, palatable me. This is the real me; the Vampire Willow. I also have other web presences out there, and I suppose it will always be that way. The weblog I've been leading people to is pretty boring. It's just a web presence just to let them know I still walk the earth.

Part of it may just be the confluence of the one year mark of this weblog, my last day of work, and my birthday, which always seems to foreshadow dying, all within one week. Time to change, turn the page, start over.

It was a ritual act, with the full, thinly-veiled, unconscious intent to keep this weblog going, because it is a purer form of expression, of what I need to get out, but I need to be safe doing it. Safe?

I think that last one is probably closest to what's really going on. I was once diagnosed with having an "adjustment disorder", and I've learned to handle it, but it's still there and comes out in small ways now.

In fact, I probably could have kept all the entries leading up to the "final" entry, and then merrily continued the next day. This plan to keep posting but not publishing it all until some undetermined later date was pretty random. It's just what occurred to me. If I had thought of just continuing, I probably would have done that.