Well, I’m entering the world of blogging. I first read about blogging in the New York Times’ Circuits section a few weeks ago, and it was intriguing. An easy way to publish mental diarrhea!

— The Tin Man, January 16, 2001

Yup. It was one year ago today that I started this damn thing.

What a long-range strip it’s been.

My baby. My monster. Attack of the evil blog. It came from Mars. The thing that ate Jeff’s life.

Yeah. My baby’s one year old today. So if this entry goes on too long, if it’s overblown, if it’s all complete bunk, I don’t really care today.

I’m giddy and it’s all mine.

I. How it Happened

II. How It Got Its Name

III. How It’s Changed Me

IV. My Favorite Entries

I. How It Happened

I began it on a complete whim. I was sitting at my desk at work one afternoon, some time on my hands, and I decided to check out the website of Rebecca Mead, a writer for the New Yorker. I’d recently read one of her articles in the magazine, and her URL had been listed inside. So I clicked on over and I stumbled upon this article, all about blogging.

I was hooked.

I’d heard vaguely about blogging before — in fact, I’d briefly followed this gay guy’s online journal a few years earlier. The guy had quite a following. I thought it was pretty cool — and pretty nuts — that someone would write about his life online, publicizing excerpts from e-mail exchanges, accounts of his dates, and so forth. I figured that anyone who did such a thing had to be a little bit bonkers. And also a little bit full of himself.

But then one cold afternoon in January 2001, I read Rebecca Mead’s article, and I thought, hmmm… looks like these blogger-types have their own little community going on here. I’d always loved to write, and I’d kept my own journal since I was 13 years old. So I decided to give it a try.

Before I even started, I tried to find some other blogs written by gay males. I must have typed “gay blog” into a search engine or something.

And the very first blog I found was that of Closet Boy.

That site had to be gay, right? I mean come on. “Closet Boy.” So I clicked on over.

I was impressed by two things on his site.

The first was the quality of the guy’s writing. Good stuff. (It still is.)

The second was his long list of links to other people’s blogs.

Wow… look at all those other gay blogs out there!

I clicked my way through a bunch of them. Besides Closet Boy, I noticed one other site that kept showing up on people’s link lists: The Daily Dean. So I checked out his site. It contained short, snappy, sexy entries of erudite world-weariness and intelligent academia. And he was also pretty buff-looking.

So I decided, cool — I’ll start a blog of my own. I already had my own website on Geocities, so I just hopped on over to Blogger.com and within 10 or 15 minutes it was set up. I now had a blog on my website.

But what to do with it? I knew I wasn’t going to be crazy enough to post my innermost thoughts online. One reason I have a website is so that people can find out about me, and divulging all my innermost troubling thoughts (we all have them, don’t even pretend you don’t) isn’t really the best way to be appealing, is it?

Yeah. I’ll never post my personal thoughts here. Heh. Heheh. Heheheheh. MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! My spleen is about to burst I’m laughing so hard. That’s funny, isn’t it? Cripes. If only I’d known.

So I wrote a couple of short entries, and then I wrote admiring e-mails to both Closet Boy and Daily Dean, naively doing the “Hey, do you mind if I link to your site? Check out mine if you want!” thing, hint hint hint hint hint. Strangely, it worked, and they linked to me. (Actually, in the very same post in which Dean introduced me, he also introduced a couple of other guys who are still around. Because of that entry, I’ve always felt this odd little kinship with “RJ” and “Flip.” It’s like we came out at the very same debutante ball.)

So, off I went. Not gonna write about anything personal, huh? Well, within a week I found myself writing about Steve and his stupid eight dollars and fifty cents. I’d always written about my personal life, but only in my private journal. Now I was doing it for others to read. And it was kinda fun. A little scary, a little unsettling — but very liberating.

If I was going to do this, I had to separate the blog from my personal website. So I created a new Geocities account for it. Much better. (Eventually I moved to Blog*spot, and finally I took up Greymatter and set up my own domain name.)

I began writing a little more openly about my personal life. And then more. And then more.

I never stopped.

II. How It Got Its Name

First I didn’t know what to call it. Because my name’s Jeff, I hit upon “Jeffervescence.” But that sounded like a black drag queen. It was gone after a couple of days. So I changed the name to “Jeffluvia.” That was just ugly. And then…

…when I was in fifth grade, I had these three friends. The four of us hung out together, two boys and two girls. One day — lord knows why — we decided we’d be the characters from “The Wizard of Oz.” Zoe was the budding little diva, so she got to be Dorothy. Derek had something feline about him, so he was the Cowardly Lion. Liz, she was the Scarecrow. And me — well, I guess that made me the Tin Man. My teachers had always kidded me about being too serious. I was a brain. I liked my brain. Heart? Emotion? What’s that? I never trusted my feelings. You couldn’t explain feelings. You couldn’t prove feelings were right or wrong. Feelings weren’t real. I liked logic. Logic was real. Logic was solid and reliable. It was nice to pretend I had a metal body. So I became the Tin Man.

This all lasted about a week, and then I forgot about it for a long, long time.

Years later I had to set up an IM account, and I remembered it. Tin Man. Short and sweet.

And I knew I was gay now. Tin Man. Friend of Dorothy.

And after a few years of therapy, I’d learned to become more comfortable with my emotions. After all, law school taught me that logic could be twisted to prove anything you wanted it to prove. But emotions — emotions really existed. They were real. I didn’t have to change them. I only had to listen to them. Accept them. Emotions were true. It turned out I’d had a heart all along.

Just like the Tin Man.

Booyah.

III. How It’s Changed Me

Wow.

First, I’ve met some wonderful people. The very first blogger I ever met in person was Choire. Choire, do you remember?

(Actually, that’s not true. The very first blogger I ever met in person was a blogger I met through the personals, but that was before I decided to start a blog and before I knew he had one of his own. I’d name him now, if only he hadn’t stayed the night with me after our date, making such a mention seem indecorous now.)

Eventually, I met others in person. My gosh! A year ago, none of the following sounded like real words: ultrasparky, leatheregg, mermaniac, jonno, blogstalker. Now I feel like I’ve always known those names. And I’ve read lots more. All these words that would have made no sense to me a year ago — they’ve become part of my everyday language. What’s a kottke? What’s an evhead? What’s a megnut? Grey matter is that stuff inside your head, right? What’s a linkslut? Archives only exist in libraries. What’s a blogmeet? What the fuck’s a blog? Metafilter’s not a word.

I’ve learned a lot from so many people.

And I’ve become a more confident writer. When I kept a private journal on paper, the words would tumble from my pen whenever and wherever and however they wanted. This site was going to be different; I knew other people would be reading it. I could wear pajamas at home, but I wanted to get dressed when I went outside. So now — I write sentences. If they don’t look right, I change them. I add some. I get rid of some. I fix the grammar. This needs to be more pithy. I need to explain that better. Whoops, I screwed up a link. Hey, why is my entire entry in italics?

In college and law school I was a newspaper columnist. We had to write miniature essays, and they had to have some sort of internal structure, and they had to make a point. It was fun to do that, so it stuck with me. When I write my blog entries, I try to make a point. It doesn’t always happen, because some days are boring. But I try to say something insightful.

And I don’t think I could do it any other way. It’s just the way I am. I think too much. I’ve always thought too much, my whole life long. I’ve always gotten worried or stressed or anxious or curious or excited about one thing or another. I’ve always wanted to solve things with my brain. If I could just think my way through this! If I could just think my way to a solution!

I’m fully aware that sometimes it’s too much. That sometimes you get tired of it. Why aren’t I good at cruising should I really be having all this sex I wish I lived in New York my job is boring I can’t believe it actually happened pornolicious pecs what a weekend what a date when do you go on a second date how do I get myself into these things what do we have in common what’s the proper balance between gratitude and dissatisfaction should I get my chest waxed?

Christ, there goes the Tin Man again. Why can’t he just relax? Why can’t he just let it be? And he sure could use an editor.

It’s therapeutic. I do it for me. I’ve learned so much from putting my musings into words. I’ve learned so much from people’s responses to those musings. I’ve learned so much — from in-person meetings, from IM chats, from e-mails, from blog comments, from threads that spread to other people’s blogs. Erotic racism. Hairy guys versus smooth guys. Too much sex. Too little sex.

And I’ve learned to trust my own voice more. To trust my own thoughts. To listen to myself better than I thought I already did. I’ve learned that it’s okay to think weird things, because everyone does. I’ve learned that it’s okay to feel neurotic. I’ve learned to write about things even if it scares the crap out me that other people will read them. Hell, I’ve learned to write about things because it scares the crap out of me that other people will read them. I’ve learned that this is my brain and this is my life and this is my site and I can do what I want and write what I want and think and feel what I want and be what I want and it doesn’t matter.

Actually, I’m still learning all of those things.

I love the fact that I can write about my life, that I can write about what I’m thinking and feeling, that I can write about sex and worries and gay life and whatever the hell pops into my mind, that I can link to any damn thing I please, and that people will read it. Why? I don’t know. But it’s a thrill.

Who knew I could do this for a year? But if you’ve blogged for any length of time, you know it’s not that hard. You just do it. Day after day. Week after week. You don’t need a plan. You just write about your day. A lot. And suddenly a year has gone by.

Just like life.

But again. Why? Why do I do this?

I wrote the answer several years ago. I wrote it in my final college newspaper column.

I am an emotional exhibitionist. I have a strange desire to tell people how I feel. Every few weeks I give ten thousand readers my deepest thoughts. I often tell my friends how I feel as well, sometimes too much. Also, sometimes I go overboard with e-mail, giving my friends more soliloquies than they would like to hear. It sometimes gets on their nerves, but I can’t seem to stop. I enjoy it too much. Perhaps it’s an addiction.

I don’t like telling people how to think; instead, I prefer telling them how I feel. I do that in the hope that something I write will touch a chord. I want people to read what I write and discover my humanity, but I want them to see their own as well. We are all connected. Yet, at the same time, we will all leave this school with nothing but ourselves.

Only connect.

IV. My Favorite Entries

No anniversary entry would be complete without some of my faves. For whatever reason, the following entries from the past year stick out in my mind.

Do you remember:

+ The Top Ten Slogans for My Blog?

+ My e-mail exchange with a gay-basher?

+ My conversation with myself?

+ My conversation with Professor Al Gore?

+ Why I Write?

+ The first time I touched on one of my recurring inner conflicts?

+ The strange way in which I lost my glasses?

+ The time the Blogstalker and I went to a sex club?

+ The time I got mugged right after an HIV test?

+ The night I met Wes?

+ The story of Kirk?

+ The story of Scott?

+ My all-night walk up Park Avenue — which ended beautifully — a couple of days before the world changed?

+ September 11, 2001?