I kept it up for a while, making these cheerful, chirpy postings to The Future Is Nao! but I felt like a total fraud. And then one day, a couple of months after I got back, I happened to check my statistics, and I realized that the whole time since I started my blog, only twelve people had ever visited it, for about a minute each, and I hadn't had a single hit in weeks, so that's when I stopped. There's nothing sadder than cyberspace when you're floating around out there, all alone, talking to yourself.
A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
I had posted just the other day an earlier quote from Ozeki's novel touching on this same discouraging subject, and now she piles on with more. Talk about kicking a guy when he's down. Lol. But isn't it just so wonderful? Isn't it so true? In fact, the entire novel so far is just so wonderfully true. I am impressed, amazed, and envious. And I don't mean to give the impression that the story is depressing. Not at all. Nao's thoughts are the thoughts of a teenager, albeit an exceptionally bright one, and her feelings are the feelings of a teenager, conveyed in a sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, sometimes fatalistic voice by an author who has not forgotten how it all feels. Blogging is of course not the important thing. It is a symbol. This is about the feeling of being so very unseen in life. It is about the will to connect, and about the crowded void one finds oneself reaching into.
I'm only 150 pages into this 400 page novel, and I'm already feeling sad that the story must end. But hey, I guess that's one thing that makes it a tale for the time being.
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