In my admittedly short time in the blogosphere, I've had very few regrets. I regret getting into a stupid argument in one blog's comment section once, and for feeling the need to post my notice of departure rather than just stalking off. I regret leaving those really stupid, long comments on [name removed so you can't go find said comments]'s Blog. There are a couple posts I regret making, and there have been a few other times I've regretted my choice of words, or my inability to say the best thing. But those are all rather minor regrets. I've learned from them, and they were nothing particularly bad in the first place. But amongst these regrets, there's one that I've never quite gotten over. See, back in January, I came across a certain blog. It was during my first venture to increase the number of blogs I read, up from one. I perused the front page of that blog quickly, and I wasn't impressed. The design seemed rather unattractive and bare bones at the time, and there was no categories list. I was looking for episodic blogs that were covering the same shows I was watching at the time, and this blog had no episodics. And so, I left, unsatisfied and without really checking things out. Unfortunately, when I opened my eyes to what the blogosphere had to offer and came back, the site had closed down, the blogger behind it saying goodbye.
The blog I'm talking about is none other than 2-D Teleidoscope, which I imagine the majority of you already know. What may surprise you is that my regret is not that I wasn't able to be a part of this blog in its final days. In fact, I'm actually a little glad that I didn't find the blog until it had closed down. Let me explain why.
2-D Teleidoscope, at least to me, has always felt like it's had such a driving force behind it. See, that last post. . .that was the first I ever read. If you'll excuse the math tutor/nerd analogy, it kinda reminds me of doing proofs with the Epsilon-Delta definition in Calculus. In these problems (or at least, the way I was taught how to do them), you start at the end and work your way backwards. Reading this blog was sort of like that. Only, in this case the journey from the finish to the end was just a little more enjoyable than a math exercise.
2DT (as the author went by) talked about something I think is relevant to most if not all anime fans; fandom itself. How it can overlap with real life, just what the fandom is (and how deep it can go), and certainly the various anime-based communities out there. He discussed Japanese culture, Otaku, and music. He gave anecdotes of his experience as a teacher in Japan. And he certainly talked about anime itself. But no matter what the post topic was, there always seemed to be something. In an earlier post of mine, I said that I read through the blog with an eagerness and sense of joy and wonder usually reserved for those anime shows I really, really love. The blog is sort of magical in that way. I can't really explain it very well, which perhaps makes this post a failure, but somehow every post made me think. It made me. There was simply no other option; my brain couldn't accept any course of action that wasn't processing the post I just read.
To try to explain this a little better, let me draw another academic analogy. If you view this blog in the same way I did, then it's somewhat like a massive essay with its thesis statement right in the beginning. Because of that last post on the top of the page, every other post just feels like it has such power, such purpose. I suppose that makes it sound like a thematic blog, which I guess is what I'm trying to get across, despite being unable to accurately determine that theme.
There's really not much more to say here, because I'm not going to relate the story surrounding the first time I read this blog. I did something similar with my previous blog spotlight, but this particular story surrounds one of the most tumultuous times of my life. I could tell it 10 times in 10 different posts, looking at it from a completely new perspective each time, and I still couldn't give you a full understanding of it. Furthermore, it's a rather personal account, which I assure you would be uninteresting to an extreme. Thus, let me get to that thing I mentioned at the beginning: my regret.
Now, I do regret that I couldn't be a part of this blog at all. It must have been an amazing place in the comments section, a veritable bazaar of thoughtfulness, intellectuality, and classiness (knowing 2DT). But, I'm able to experience this (albeit in a lesser form) on Twitter, where I can have conversations with him about anything (and not just post topics). I won't say it's better, but I don't think it's much worse. No, what I regret is that I had the chance to experience this before the blog's end, and I didn't take it. For what reason? Because it wasn't what I was *expecting* to find. It wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be at the time, and therefore I turned it down. And that is what I regret; my own shortsightedness, and the opportunities I missed because of it.
Like my other regrets, I don't think this is all bad. I honestly don't think that the person I was back then would have been all that great a commenter, and I doubt I would have fully appreciated 2-D Teleidoscope if I had read it anytime before I did. But I can't help but feel that I wasted a precious, irreplaceable opportunity, and I've never quite gotten over that. Why do I bring this up? Well, I'm not talking about regrets to further cement my image as a depressed wannabe, but rather because thinking about it made me realize that I learned something from reading this blog. I think I've made it clear that my initial (and subsequent) readings had the cloud of regret looming over them, but as I said it was also a great experience. It felt like I was not just reading someone's thoughts about art, but art itself. It was overall a bit of a bittersweet experience, but it taught me how to find joy in the midst of regret and depression. I said it was a turbulent time in my life, and it was, but that skill made it infinitely easier to deal with the turbulence. I strongly encourage you to go and read through this blog if you haven't; it may not have as emotional an impact on you as it did on me, but at least you can appreciate it for the excellent reading it provides. It was a great experience for me, regrets and all, and I think (and certainly hope) it will be for you, too.
Here's the link: http://2dteleidoscope.wordpress.com/
