What I Mean by "Reincarnated."

November 2005: To weaken the sting of Chicago temp-work drudgery, I start two blogs, one here, the other on MySpace. The latter bloats while the former starves.
May 2006: Fed up with MySpace spam and friend-request viruses, I return howling to this blog, promising myself better: more readers, nattier template, the trappings of decent prose.

July 2006: Quit job, road-trip to New York City, Boston, and the Carolinas. Exhaust my monies renting a house with friends in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Come home, begin graduate school, learn to hate to write. This is required to study Joyce. Forget blog completely.

August 2007: Fail out of graduate school. Roommate, fighting upstream toward PhD in high-energy particle physics, invites me to his childhood home in Puerto Rico, to decompress. Almost drown swimming drunk in the midnight sea. Try to set up hermitage in the limestone caves of Camuy. Authorities repatriate me.

March 2008: Chip away the days playing Nintendo Wii. Make shallow calculation to sponge off parents forever.

April 2008: Begin teaching English-as-second-language to adult Mexicans. Rediscover loves of language and soccer. Sign in to old blog, find terms of use have changed, opt not read boilerplate, forget blog completely.

April 2011: Decide to move come September. Stumble on blog purporting to be Shaquille O'Neal's, in which he calls Kobe Bryant a rapist. To post a comment warning of libel, must sign in to Google account, which asks if I'd like to reclaim this blog. Shout, "YES!" and scare entire coffee shop. View old posts, vomit, edit old posts, rededicate blog to fiction.