The problem with not writing in your diary for over 3 weeks is that you feel as though the entry you start back up with needs to be momentous. Something needs to have happened that must be written down. And if that's not the case, then you feel a need to explain, "Oh, Diary, things have been so crazy lately. So here's everything that's happened since I last visited..." Almost every paper diary I have is filled with entries like that. I even have one where after the first six pages it picks up with, "I know it's been more than a year since I've kept a journal, and even then it was pretty sporadic, but this time, this time is going to be different. I'm going to keep writing this time." And you guessed it, that's the last entry. What can I say? I'm a bad diary-keeper.
Actually, I think I may know what my problem is, well, this time at least. For the past three weeks it's not that I haven't wanted to write in my diary, and it's not that nothing has happened, it's almost the opposite. See, when big things happen to me, I clam up. It's a defense mechanism of some sort. I haven't exactly figured out how it works, but as far as I can tell, there's some kind of automatic switch that just flips whenever I feel vulnerable.
I haven't wanted to deal with things lately, so I just pushed my own private pause button and stopped for a while. I let life go on around me while I hunkered down and played Dr. Mario. It was fun. Unfortunately summer vacations do not last forever, and I believe that it's time for me to venture back out into the real world. Well, actually, my family believes that it's time for me to venture back out into the real world. Personally, I could stick around awhile to find out what happens when I complete all ten levels of the Dr. Mario story on the hard setting without dying. It's that last level, you know, gets me every time.