In Memorium

You may or may not be aware that I am your local expert on fish euthanasia.* Either way, you may be wondering why, and, as per usual, there's a story behind it. Just over two years ago, my roommate Natalie returned from winter break to find that her beta fish, Xiao-wang Li, had contracted some sort of fish fungus while she had been away. Fortunately, our dear friend Jarom had the sense to medicate him during her absence.
* I'm also your local expert on dolphin mating habits, but let's not talk about that. Suffice it to say that I am now afraid of dolphins.

Unfortunately, upon his return to our humble apartment, Xiao's little fishie body soon found it wasn't so compatible with the cool temperature of our apartment, and the fungus came back with a vengeance. Xiao floated in a cloud of his own self-generated gloop, hovering in the same spot in his fishbowl, having lost the will to swim playfully or eagerly chomp on the colorful fish flakes proffered to him each day. At length, Natalie decided that it was too much to see him so unhappy, so unable to live life to the fullest; it became clear that the time had come to escort Xiao-wang Li our of his mortal existence, and pronto.

The excruciating pain of playing mother and murderess to her darling fish was overwhelming, thus I took it upon myself to research the most humane methods of dispatching the poor guy whilst also maintaining easy clean up (hence the decision against tossing him into a running blender). Our home teachers and dinner groupies were summoned to perform the execution** and participate in the funeral and memorial service. Likely, you assume I'm dramatizing.
** Not the only time I've asked home teachers to kill a fish. True story. 

My friends, it gets no more dramatic than this:

Yes, Natalie is wearing my scarf as a shroud and possibly genuinely crying over the dying fish. (I'm only making a little bit of fun. I actually quite admire Nat's desire to take seriously the closure of a mortal probationary period, even that of a fish. I also potentially recognize the drama of the event as a coping mechanism.) (Love you much Natcat901!)

Xiao was submerged in an ice water bath which delivered a short, severe shock to his nervous system and almost instantly ended his life. He then made his way to the Happy Fishbowl in the Sky and we buried his now lifeless form among the bushes outside our living room window.

This story may seem like an odd one to tell at this particular point in time; after all, it's been more than two years since Xiao died. The thing is that lately I've been contemplating euthanasia of another kind. (Don't worry, this isn't about to get political.) And, like Natalie, I feel compelled to mourn, but the poor thing has been dying for months, barely hanging on to life, and seeming to decay before my eyes.

I should probably tell you now that what I'm thinking of killing is … my blog.

That's a strangely painful thing to say. Since I started it freshman year, it's been such a fun journey, figuring out the types of things I like to post and having an outlet for my creative energies and emotions. It's been the most fun when people tell me that they've read it and enjoyed it; few things feel great the way that feels great.

All that being said, over the past few months, I've felt it beginning to fall apart and fall away from me. My posts have been few and far between, and, as the past year has been a wild roller coaster of emotions and experiences, those posts have varied to the extreme--from spiritual to angry to silly. I have been a wildly emotional human, and I've been pretty messy about it. I feel like I've been swinging around a bat of words, letting myself run wild and veritably vomiting verbosely into the void (muahahaha alliteration!), and I'll be the first to admit that I periodically need a little projectile-puke-prose (I will not apologize for this)...

However, this is not what I want my blog to be anymore. And while I could conceivably deconstruct the blog, delete posts as I wish, refurbish it with a new title and theme, and try to rebuild it… I don't want to do that. It seems like a betrayal of the beautifully organic nature of blogs. (Although I recognize the argument could be made that pruning does not constitute an affront to said organic nature.) Right now, I feel a bit like Hades, in one of my all-time favorite movies, Disney's Hercules. He has a conversation with one of his minions that goes a little something like this***:

Hades: How do you kill a god?
Panic: You can't. They're immortal.
Hades: Bingo! They're immortal!
*** I'm calling BS on myself. "A little something"? I know every word in that movie and I could probably perform it verbatim from beginning to end.

So how do I kill a blog? Well, I can't. There's no such thing as blog-euthanasia. All I can really do is abandon it, and leave it to become the desolate ruins of What Once Was. Such is the way of the internet. (You know, you can still go look at Julie Powell's original blog that inspired the book and movie Julie and Julia. It's an awesome, albeit completely hideous, internet relic. Also, lots of profane language, so be warned.)

I suppose, ultimately, I'm not really killing it … I'm just shedding it like a skin that doesn't quite fit me anymore. And that's about all I have for you. The Happy Pessimist (or Happiness Condensed, as it was first titled) is no more, and this … well, this is goodbye.

Adios, Blogger. It's been real.****
****Don't you stop scrolling, ya hear? 


























Psh, yeah right! 
As if I would ever really stop blogging.
Who do you crazies think I am?
Do you even know me?

kaylacardon.wordpress.com
New host. New title. New blog. 
Watch out.