My younger brother just made a Myspace page lately, and he's gotten caught up in new-blog-excitement. I remember this from when I first made my LJ & was posting all the time - then people found it & I got all self-conscious & now it's pretty much just quizzes & random musings.

My brother's first few entries were about music, movies, his disenchantment with modern baseball - all well & good. His last entry started out talking about the finale of some show he watches, then ended with this:

"I realized a few nights ago when I stopped talking. I figure that I was pretty normal in Mountain Home (K-2) and again in Staunton (3&4). But I completely shut down after we moved to Haleyville (5th grade). I've been drifting these last 14 years. Was this change as marked as I'm remembering? or was I never normal?"

My brother never says anything introspective. Never! I simultaneously want to hug him & tell him he'll be fine, and am thinking, No! Anyone can stumble across stuff you put on the internet - cousins, family ... We are a reticent, secretive people (he doesn't talk much, really, but many people talk too much - we're just quiet and he's the quietest), and I'm suspicious of any opening up. Maybe he'll think better of it soon & edit the entry - I did that with several blog entries myself when I realized more than two people had found it.

He'll be moving up here in a couple of weeks. Maybe switching locales will help, & he'll start feeling more adventurous & positive. That's another reason I really wanted a four-bedroom house, even though some friends of mine thought it wasn't a good idea. He gets along with the other two people we'll be living with, and if he was going to get his own place he would have done it already. This seems like a good first step ...