Irony Becomes Her

Concerning Blogs

There are some issues I either didn't think of or chose to ignore when I started a weblog:

Mortality: When would it end? Would I update regularly for the rest of my life? Would this technology survive for the fifty years I can reasonably expect to live? What will I do if I ever want a break?

When it's time to sweep up the blog and put it away, I think I'll know. I don't intend to leave it posted once it dies or hibernates. Failure to let go of the old and dead is usually the reason I can't see new things. For now, I will continue to use it for its limited worth.

Mutability: How much should I change/explain my posts? Some bloggers are perfectly willing to interact with their commenters and carry their ideas to new heights. Usually, I have said as much as I have to say in my post; reactions to it are purely a concern of those who have them. It is a matter of pride that I have said no more nor less than I intended to say; further discussion about it is either the domain of others or of private clarification.

This is more of an explanation than an excuse of my seeming insensibility to comments; perhaps my New-Critic heart simply cannot abide the methodical dismantling of my carefully-structured posts.

There are a couple issues I considered and find I must now reconsider:

Purpose: Blogs are used for many different purposes, but the ones I read are primarily for journaling (see French root), soap-boxing, news reporting, confessional, and pure silliness. None of these appealed to me for mine; with a dramatic social idealism, I hoped my blog would point readers to reflection--that my experiences would be translated into thoughts that might point those of my readers inward and Godward. My experience would only be a springboard to ideas much more universal and interesting.

I begin to think I was mistaken. A text must be a truly great one to stand apart from its author; it is debatable whether such a one even exists. Though it has probably been happening for some months, I now admit to myself and my audience that I do blog to share my experience. I blog for those I know will read, not for some kind of nebulous mass audience to observe and wonder.

Privacy: The reason it took me so long to start a blog (even having lived on a campus where you're no one without a blog) is that, believe it or not, I am a private person. What really goes on uncensored in my head and my heart is confidential information. It is not something for the entire Internet to share, sympathetic though the impersonal monolith may sometimes be. Reading my blog is not exactly a way to know "how I'm doing," and I'm sure my fellow bloggers agree.

"But Lynn always wears her emotions on her sleeve." Yes, I do. But those emotions, contrary to some intuition, are not the unadulterated me. Thankfully, emotions are only one pillar of a multi-pillared self that houses mind, body, and spirit; it is not purely a decorative one, nor is it the only pillar supporting the structure. I am no personality theorist, but I do know that neither looking at me nor reading my blog will accurately reflect me. I have no desire to be digitized and distributed instantaneously and globally. The blog is only a supplement to the "real" me, the one even I won't know fully until I am fully known. (That is why the Johari Window has fascinated me ever since Intro to Speech Communication.)

I didn't intend alliterative points, but perhaps Southern sermons are beginning to osmose. That would explain the loquacity.

posted by Lynn @ 4:58 AM