For me, the search for a happy life is predicated in finding a way to maintain the constructing of a meta-narrative: keeping aware of the days as they pass; knowing that there's a place where I am storing memories, thoughts, and creations; and at certain intervals, re-visiting those memories, are important in creating the self, in my experience.

I do keep notebooks of various types of content, including free-writing, lists, doodles, sketches, notes from various meetings. Personal notebooks, however, don't allow me to interact with readers the way the internet does. I've forced myself, for a few years now, to continue without a redesigned homepage and with a stagnant blog; I've found that the lack of upkeeping the design has enraged the part of myself that desires a home for the virtual metanarrative that I have wanted to be creating. I don't purport to be a designer of great webpage architectures, but I do have a part of me that wants to express itself through the home-design of my webpages.

Social media pages such as Facebook and Flickr do not allow the user enough flexibility of design expression for those sites to fulfill my desire for a web-home. Twitter, of course, though it permits unique background design, limits the length of Tweets (making it not-ideal as a potential Web homebase for a writer); and doesn't host photos, making it necessary to open yet another account, and further fragmenting my sense of web home. Having the photography be on a satellite page such as Twitpic, makes it feel like incidental or supplemental material, when in actuality, it's a primary method of expression. Having the repository of photography be separate from the textual narrative and purported home page has been an irksome peeve of mine ever since it became evident that using Flickr as a visual repository provided a more streamlined and a searchable timeline for my visual web content. I'll get into my feelings about Flickr (both its wonders and its drawbacks) in the future, but for now I'm addressing how these many pages haven't fulfilled my yen for, nor quelled my anger at not being able to maintain a self-designed web-based meta-narrative for myself.

At this point in my writing (in recent months, the jotting down of ideas or private note-taking), I'll veer off to do some reading in the areas I am thinking about.

So much more to address. More later!