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- A new approach to writing my story? (Added 4 June 2012)
- Typographical errors (Added 5 June 2012)
- Poor website organization (Added 11 June 2012)
- Disjoint information could suggest a disjoined mind (Added 11 June 2012)
A new approach to writing my story?
4 June 2012: I wrote hundreds of words and posted multiple documents in less than one week during April 2012. Since then, it is has been exceptionally difficult to be motivated enough to write anything else. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand why and how to change things. I still have a strong desire to talk about these events, although I am still not completely sure why I have such a strong desire. One thing I realized is that it is a daunting task to attempt to explain so many different events that have happened in the last nine years. While the majority of the unpleasant things happened in the last few years, many things will only make sense if I explain why I decided to go to law school, how I got into law school, my law school experience, and many other things that happened in the last nine years. Furthermore, since my family relationships are a significant part of my hopelessness, there will be times when I have to explain events from 30 years ago or maybe even from before I was born. not a professional writer, and I do not have any experience writing something so massive.
A few days ago, however, I realized that I have already written down many fragments of my story. I've written to my friends, my family, my lawyer, and to the Illinois bar. I am going to try a new approach for now: I will go through these emails and letters and legal filings, and I will post them here (sometimes with redacted information, with corrected typographical errors, with edits for clarity, and/or with comments for context and clarity. This is less ideal than if I were able to write a cohesive, non-repetitive explanation of the events, but I do not yet have that skill.
Even if I did have that skill, these events would require hundreds (possibly more than a thousand) of pages to explain. It would require that much writing because the issues are complexly interwoven between family relationships (each family has a unique dynamic and it must be explained), friendships, romantic relationships, work relationships and work situations, legal issues, political issues, small-town living (which is exceptionally different than living in a city where most people are anonymous), my helping someone I care deeply about deal with a brutal rape, finding a wonderful friend but losing him to cancer when he was only 25 years old, explaining the cultural differences and perceptions between China and America, and many other difficult topics. Not one of these topics can be discussed in isolation, and even a highly-skilled writer would need time to explain them all.
My temporary solution, therefore, is to share past writings with you. I will try to organize them so that they make some sense, but there will always be gaps. If this approach has some success, then it may help me to re-organize and to re-write my story in a more traditional fashion. Maybe it will work, maybe it will fail, but since my current plan hasn't produced much in over a month, I think this is worth attempting.
Typographical errors (Added 5 June 2012)
I know I have typographical errors. (I do not know where they are, or I would correct them.) This writing process is dramatically different than anything I have done before. So far, my process has been relatively rough: I write down my thoughts, I run spell check, and I upload the new page. Sometimes I will write in Microsoft Word, which has a grammar checker, and sometimes I will re-read what I wrote one or more times looking for ways to edit, but my goal is to share as much information as I can. Since there is so much to share, I cannot possibly achieve my typical editing goals.
On the one hand, I am disappointed with myself because of the lower quality. This website is quite literally, my website. No one else is responsible for it. I am not writing this to get a good grade in school, so I am not trying to write something that my professor will like. I am writing this because I want (or need) to write it. And the standards I set are entirely my own. I wish I were a faster and more skilled writer so that I could both meet my personal belief in excellence and share my experiences (without taking years to write them).
Since I do have typographical errors, I ask for your understanding and that you give me the benefit of the doubt if I write something strange. I missing word, especially a missing "not", can dramatically change my intended meaning. Finally, I would be delighted if you helped me find an eliminate errors. If you know how to contact me, and you see an error, please do tell me about it.
Poor website organization (Added 11 June 2012)
For many years, I was a web designer and information architect. (The articles in that link are from 2001: the appearance is horrible and my writing skill is much worse than today.) I have the skills to arrange information on a website in a clear and cohesive structure, but this portion of my website is a gigantic mess. It is a mess because I do not have a plan or a "vision" for the information, so the arrangement is haphazard. It is embarrassing to me, and it has been one of the reasons I have been reluctant to add new information. Please forgive the poor organization.
Disjoint information could suggest a disjoined mind (Added 11 June 2012)
Despite my website's lack of cohesion, I do not have schizophrenia. In popular culture, most people use the word schizophrenia when they really mean "multiple personality disorder". Schizophrenia has multiple symptoms, but I summarize schizophrenia as meaning "a break from reality." Schizo means "to break" while phren means "mind". People with schizophrenia often have hallucinations, delusions (including paranoia), and bizarre thought processes that do not reflect reality. In other words, the person's mind has had a break from reality.
I have tried to collect all of the information about my life and rearrange it into a clear and easy-to-follow set of events. Right now, the task is beyond my skill-set because there are too many events over too many years, and many of the events are include technical issues of law or psychology. Instead, my new plan is to post letters, original documents, and some interpretation. The end result will inherently be disjointed, have overlapping information, and most importantly, there will be some unintentional gaps in the information. Those gaps could make other information difficult to understand or believe. To some people, the poor organization of the information might suggest that it is poorly organized because my mind is poorly organized—that I am suffering from schizophrenia. That is another reason why I have not written more on my website. Some of the events are so unbelievable that it would be easy to for some people to think I am lying or delusional.
