Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

People have asked me many times how I could write about my whole life on the Internet. Anyone could read it! Dire consequences might follow! They want to know how I keep it safe, keep it secret: a website bearing my real name.

My answer is always the same; honestly, I have nothing to hide. I'm an adult, I'm responsible for myself, and I own my mistakes. For many years I've been the type to give direct answers to direct questions, and while there have been times where I might imply that I have more (or less) experience with certain things, on these pages I've been pretty straight with the ethereal out there. There never seemed to be any point in hiding that I'm a drunk, or overweight, or sometimes pretty fucking lonely. Besides, I believe that reading about my life is probably like watching Nascar: no one really wants to see anyone get hurt, but if it happens, no one wants to miss it either. Having to run across a university quad in broad daylight wearing only a bathrobe? Fantastic! Walking home alone, drunk, in the middle of the night? Well, it was a close call, but I got home okay. Finally being painfully rejected by a longtime crush? Learning experience. Hungover and puking on a public intersection at high noon, with cars all around? Comedy gold.

My humanity and ability to err are the things that have made my life interesting. In the past couple of years or so, however, things have gotten much less compelling on paper. Not bad, per se, but not as riveting as things might have been in my younger days. I spend much more time just chilling out, or talking to my friends, or working, and not getting into anything really resembling trouble. On the one hand it can be comforting to have things be so constant, on the other I've almost been waiting for something to happen to me, because while I can go back to many times in my adult life and read about how things were, I feel like I'm going to go back to this time in my life and find an empty hole, resembling in that way my life before high school, of which I remember very little.

And yet.

The past couple of weeks have been different. I've felt like someone else, and that Jenna is totally irresponsible, blows off work, doesn't keep in touch with family, and is at times dishonest. That Jenna does things that draw blood. This person that I am not has felt more alive than I ever feel, but also manic, crazy, and fantastically selfish. On the one hand I want to be more like this woman, and on the other, I wonder how long I might live if I let her truly run wild.

Lately I've done enthralling things, actions and thoughts that make for compelling, if not necessarily happy or comedic, reading. I composed the essays in my head one million times, tossing and turning in my bed, trying to wrap my head around who I might become if I don't keep this all in check. Then it hit me: I finally have some things that I need to hide. I can't, at this time, live my life in public the way I used to, so I can't vent, I can't work it all out for myself in essay form and publish it for the world to see. Let me tell you, for someone who has a years-old habit of living her life out in the open, having secrets is actually pretty fucking stressful.