Toastie ‘97
About me and my history of journaling
I began keeping a spiral-bound notebook as a journal in February 1989 at the age of 13. I maintained several volumes of this journal for a couple of years before going hi-tech and typing my entries on my Tandy computer, and then later on my Smith Corona Acer. I began attending Duke University in August 1993, and I continued typing entries into Microsoft Word. Eventually, I had a writing class or two that required some journaling, and I switched back to handwritten entries, using variations on the $9.99 hardbound journal one gets at Barnes & Noble.
I continued my handwritten journaling until December 2003, when I was introduced to LiveJournal. The chance to share some thoughts with friends and strangers alike was appealing (my “friends” wound up being mostly strangers). I wrote a decent number of “public” posts, but most of my thoughts were locked for “friends” only, with an occasional entry that would be completely private.
Fast-forward to February 2007. Over the years, I’ve increasingly had a desire to express my thoughts on a wide range of topics. The ability to get others to read my writings or view those vitally important links-of-interest that I post (such as one to the obituary of Charles Nelson Reilly) was hampered by the youth-centric LiveJournal platform. And so I installed the WordPress blogging software on my server and began publishing to Toastiest anything I determined the whole world can know about.
In August 2007, I find myself having come full-circle, in a way. in a little bungalow in need of some attention and understanding.
Great, but what’s this new blog for?
In August 2007, I find myself having come full-circle, in a way. I live just a couple of blocks off of Duke University’s East Campus. So as I watched the Class of 2011 move in, 14 years after my own freshmen move-in, I felt compelled to start a new blog. It’s about a screwed-up 17-year-old kid who comes down from New Jersey to attend majestic Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The kid’s name is Dave. He’ll later come to be known as Toastie, but he won’t know that when the blog begins, back in September 1993. The names of the characters will be changed to protect…I’m not quite sure whom, them or myself, but it just seems like a good idea to use pseudonyms.
And why am I doing this?
There are a couple of reasons. First, it could be therapeutic for me. It could also be disastrously traumatic to relive these years, but it could be therapeutic, and that’s what I’m hoping for. Second, there are 1700 incoming freshmen at Duke University. I’m jealous-as-hell of all of ‘em, because they’ve got their whole undergraduate lives ahead of them, and most of them are gonna have one helluva time at Duke. This blog won’t be for that latter group.
There might be one or two or twelve in the Class of 2011, whether they’re at Duke or UNC or Rutgers or wherever, and they’ll find themselves overwhelmed beyond their capacity to cope. Their ability to thrive to meet their own expectations of themselves will be compromised, and they’re going to have a helluva time having a helluva time over the next four years. And maybe, just maybe, one of them will find this blog, and somehow it will help. Either they’ll feel as if they’re not the only ones who have felt a certain way, they’ll be motivated to seek the right kind of help, or they’ll come to loathe me and simply become determined not to wind up like me. (Mind you, how I’ve “wound up” is hardly the worst fate in the world, but I certainly have a long list of circumstances that I wish were different).
So ‘Toastie ‘97′ means what, exactly?
Toastie is the pledge name I received from my fraternity in early 1994, and 1997 is simply the year I graduated. On the fraternity list-serv, it became common for me to sign emails Toastie ‘97.
How can I contact Toastie?
Aside from leaving a comment after an entry, you can email me:
