I have written 1,871 entries on this blog, including the 21 entries that I have virtually unpublished.
On top of that, I have two unpublished drafts on here.
The first one is a fully-formed, multi-part entry that I had written eight years ago. As in, I was ready to hit publish and allow the world to see it. Instead, only... three people have seen it. The reason it's not online is because one of them was worried that it'd make them look bad. If anything, I argued, it'd make me look bad, but then again, eight years ago is a very different time.
The second one isn't complete. I first wrote it seven years ago. It was something I was meaning to go back to, but wasn't able to, for some reason - although I assume that "some reason" is because I really had nothing to say. The whole thing was hinged around a sign on a hospital door that I walked past. It said "reverse isolation", and this being before the pandemic, it seemed quirky to those who didn't know better.
I was reading that draft today, and - not that I planned to finish it - I really can't remember how that gap in the middle was supposed to go. I only had the beginning and the end, and the vaguest of ideas about that middle bit - a hospital visit, a hospital visit I wasn't expecting to make, the very reason why I saw that sign. I do still have memories of walking the streets of a city I know, but don't really know, trying to look for the best place to hail a cab back to my hotel.
What I did write down was vivid, though. I mean, maybe "vivid" isn't the right term? I don't remember the conversations happening, but I'm sure they did, or else I wouldn't have written about them so journalistically. But then, it also felt like a relic of the time. I know pretty much all of the people I mention in that draft have moved on to other things, to other places. I am only in contact with one of them now, and they tell me of a sadness that they had back then that wasn't very obvious seven years ago. Either that, or I'm really just dense.
"You sure it's okay, though? I'm not being a third wheel or anything?"
I don't know why I said that, too. I suppose it's just proof of how much things can change - and how much I had hoped that things don't. It causes too much pain.
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