As time went on I spent less and less time writing in my diary. Of course by the time I was in my 20s I was calling it a journal (only teenage girls have diaries)...and gradually it became like a friend who had moved thousands of miles away...somehow I fell out of touch with it, and only wrote when I was angry or frustrated and needed to figure out a knotty situation in writing rather than struggling with it mentally. Part of the reason for this was that I had become a professional writer, and there was something about keeping a detailed journal that smacked of dilettantism...it seemed masturbatory to write about myself, and anyway after a long day of working on an article or a book the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and scribble some more.
Nonetheless I'm rather sorry I didn't keep it up...I have had a pretty eventful past few years, and it would have been nice to have made some notes about what was going on. Between 1997 and the present time I split up with my husband, whom I'd married when I was 21; was diagnosed with cancer and underwent major surgery and radiation treatments (it's now been in remission for five years); signed a contract to produce my first music CD (the company later went out of business without releasing the CD); began a musical collaboration with a strange and brilliant fellow, John Tabacco, which continues today; and perhaps most importantly, I became involved with my present partner Eric Weaver and moved to the East Coast from Los Angeles.
I recently discovered this website completely by accident through a pop-up ad (which should have been eliminated by my web browser :)). As of this writing my own website is in a state of flux, although I'm hoping it will be back online soon. In the meanwhile, this diary, or journal, or whatever you want to call it, seems like a good way to keep my friends up to date on what's going on, and also a way for me to keep notes about things for future reference. I hope it's useful and amusing. --Nigey
