Time to graduate from xanga.com

If you want to read it, it's still there. I'm doing this partly because I'm in Beijing right now and I can't reliably access xanga for some reason. But mostly because I want to start something new. I finally did it - I mean I hung onto my old xanga for 6 years out of sheer determination and principle. I felt it was somehow important to maintain consistency, to make no apologies, to be really brutal about not "privatizing" or hiding things once they were posting, no matter how embarrassing they were.

But times change, and technology won't allow me to keep it the way I wanted to. So I finally admitted to myself that it has hit its expiration date. I don't like how overexposed it is, how boring it became, how I never really knew who was reading, and how it brought me so much pain and trouble, how I could never really predict how people would react to it, and how I felt slighted if people did not read it or comment on it. How I "fell out" of certain blogrings. How I'd suspect, but never know, that exes were reading it. And the truth is, I felt totally handicapped after that awful incident with my former classmate in 2004 and my blog was never the same.

I hope herein I can capture some of that lost wonder and innocence of the early days, where it was important to talk about beautiful things I'd seen, things I wished for, things I was learning every day about everything. I hope I can try being honest again. I don't know if I'll ever pick up my real diary again... it hasn't elicited the same kind of beauty as those first precious years on xanga.

As for honesty, here's the truth. I always tried to keep my actual blog alive but I had, of course, several others, of varying secrecy. One I tried to reserve for people I didn't know personally, only through xanga. That backfired when I accidentally commented on a friend's blog with the wrong identity. One I made and only told about 5 non-friends about. One I made and told no one about, and I revisit it every so often to unburden myself of some dark and most shameful thoughts. The anonymity is totally liberating. Then, of course, my totally public blogs: one on bay area food, one on ugly-cute things, one on beijing.

After 6 years, I hope I have learned something. I won't be using full names at all, I'll avoid using names at all if I can. I won't post this link stupidly on some place where an employer, or random person from elementary school, can find it.

That said, I chose the name for several reasons:

sinafile = play on "cinephile"
sinafile = play on "sinophile"
sina-file = files on a sina, i.e. me
sin-a-file = filing away sins?

I came up with it in about 10 seconds. Rarely happens this quickly. I need to decide how, if at all，I will market the new blog. Depends on the target audience right? I know it's impossible to fully control. But I can give it my best shot.

It's so late here, and I have work tomorrow. Don't know how I will survive. Emotions I'm dealing with right now: elation about the excellent time I had at karaoke this evening, wishing my boyfriend could take me in his arms that are like home to me, and hold my cheek with his fingers that fit so comfortably against my face, sensing the impending conclusion of my time in Beijing and the consequent desperation, the longing to stay here a while, maybe not forever, but enough to grow some roots, have some experiences, deepen some relationships. And a bit of confusion on so many things. Being without my boyfriend has thrown me off balance, and work is not going the way I'd hoped. Listening to and loving this electronic instrumental song my cousin burned onto a CD for me. Alternating it with Vienna Teng's 'Gravity - Lake Version' and '9 Crimes' by Damien Rice:

leave me out with the waste, this is not what i do
it's the wrong kind of place to be thinking of you
it's the wrong time for somebody new
it's a small crime, and i got no excuse

and is that all right? yeah
give my gun away when it's loaded
that all right? yeah
if you don't shoot it, how'm i supposed to hold it
that all right? yeah

leave me out with the waste, this is not what i do
it's the wrong kind of place to be cheating on you
it's the wrong time, she's pulling me through
it's a small crime, and i got no excuse

and is that all right? yeah
give my gun away when it's loaded
that all right? yeah
if you don't shoot it, how'm i supposed to hold it
that all right? yeah
give my gun away when it's loaded
is that all right, is that all right with you?

Last night I finished "The Lookout." I will probably never get sick of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's fluid grace, slight frame, wiry sultriness. I like watching him with a girl - he touches the way I want to be touched, drawing a finger assuredly down her hairline and tucking a strand behind her ear. Besides the fact that he's a fantastic actor. I didn't like this movie as well as I liked "Brick," but it was still good, masterfully shot. There lie great things ahead for him.

We sang "Book of Days" by Enya at karaoke today. I forgot how much I love that song, forgot how I lay on my back sophomore year of high school, after kevin had introduced it to me, dreaming that I was flying wild and free over a gold-lit ocean with a blazing ball of sun setting before me. The lyrics too are more beautiful than I would have guessed.

Okay, I really need to sleep. Just had a few things I wanted to say. Good night.