Psquared Redux

I've been contemplating restarting psquaredtothenth since the day it disappeared from my Friendster account a year and a half ago. Don't ever let it be said that I make decisions in haste.

Shortly after it vanished however, I found Facebook. Look up the phrase "sucked in" and you'll see a picture of me chained to my FB page agonizing over my next status update. Petr is so impressed with himself that he truly believes more than 400 "friends" are hanging on his every word and thought.

Of course, that's my convenient excuse -- Facebook distracted me. The real (and much more disturbing) reason I took so long to resurrect my blog is because I was afraid. Afraid that I didn't have anything to say now, or that I no longer could say it as cleverly as I could before. If that sounds asinine -- what could happen that would cause me to forget how to write -- let me explain.

For those of you that never got to see the first incarnation of psquared, I probably should bring you up to speed (unconscious pun there). My blog existed from approximately April 2005 until April 2008. Everything posted there prior to August 2007 was written under the influence of crystal meth. Until getting sober a little over two years ago, I had been a daily user since about the end of 2004. Additionally (and completely counter-intuitively), that was the first time in my life that I was able to get myself to write on anything resembling a regular basis. While it was taking virtually everything else from me (including my sanity), crystal gave me one thing that I could never find before -- my voice.

I never, ever trusted myself as a writer. I doubted every thought I had, every word I wrote. I would paralyze myself with fear and criticism. Then I would berate myself for not writing. I was trapped by every negative belief I ever had about myself. Speed erased all of that. The doubt. The fear. The self-flagellation and judgment. All gone (up in smoke, as it were). Plus, it gave me the ability to focus on the appropriateness of a dash as compared to a comma or an ellipses for hours. While the word prolific was never going to be proffered with regard to my output, the volume relative to me at normal speed was astounding. Most of it was quite good (again, relative only to my previous writing) too.

Predictably, once the crystal was out of my system, I discovered that the doubt and fear were still there, but now armed with a new weapon -- a belief that crystal was the only thing that made me witty and interesting. I wrote occasionally until the drug-induced psychosis lifted about three months after the last time I used. After that, it became painful to even contemplate writing. So, for that next year I didn't even think about it. Just put it aside.

In January, the confluence of my American Idol and Facebook addictions resulted in me dipping my toe back into the water. I used the notes section of FB to blog about AI each week. It was a simple little step that I figured would at least show me if I could write on a fairly regular basis. It probably goes without saying -- since I'm restarting my blog -- that the experiment was a success. There were surely only 50 people -- maybe 50 -- reading what I wrote every week, but it really didn't matter. I was enjoying the process and liking the result. I would have been happy with just one of those outcomes, so it was like hitting the lottery.

So, here I am. Giving it another go. What can you expect to see here? Well, for starters I love lists. So you'll get plenty of those -- the seven best this, my 13 favorite that. You'll definitely overdose on American Idol and all its present and past contestants. Tennis is another passion, so I'll be writing about that here as well. Occasionally, I'll dump my opinion about equal rights or some other political or social issue I'm feeling strongly about on you. And, since I'll be moving to California in the next few months, you can bet you will be reading about that. In other words, whatever's on my mind that day.

Finally, the main reason I'm writing again is because I want to sort out what happened over the past 5 years. So, I will definitely be writing about that. Some of it will be funny; some of it sad; probably a lot of it appalling. But it's where -- and who -- I was (and am glad to be free from) so I'm going to get it out here.

I look forward to getting your feedback as well, so definitely comment if you have something to say. Absolutely say something if you like what you see here, but even if you don't, speak up. I can take it.

Maybe I'll try out some clever catchphrases to end my posts with. I'll just keep trying different ones until I find one I like.

Psquared out. (I had to get that one out of my system. Sorry.)