It's funny. Amongst my friends, I'm not known for my brevity. As one friend once said, "You and I, we never say in five words what we can say in fifty." I adore prepositional phrases, and have a tendency to write in run-on sentences. Hellsy, more often than not, I think in paragraphs, not sentences.
My preferred method of communication with my nearest and dearest these days is e-mail. I write epic e-mails. I wax hyperbolic about everything and nothing. And yet, when it comes time to blog -- to discuss the same sorts of miscellaneous life experiences I e-mail friends about daily -- I have writer's block.
Maybe it's the knowledge that this blog could gain a life of its own and, as I think I've written before, who knows who could wind up reading it. After all, with a little creative Googling, it's not too hard to track down former high school nemeses, friends with whom we've lost touch, old colleagues, our exes, our significant others' exes, our exes' significant others, and so on. We like to think that our e-mails never reach any destinations other than the eyes of the readers for whom we intend our messages. More often than not, they probably don't. But blogging? Blogging is putting something out there for everything to see.
After all, as recently as this past week, I read the story of a favorite blogging family of mine: a photograph they'd taken of their daughter had been used by an online parenting website in conjunction with an article about the dangers of lead paint. Used with neither their knowledge nor consent. That's unacceptable. That sort of thing gives me pause; it make me think twice before continuing with this blogging effort.
If all I want to do is keep a journal, I don't need a blog on which to do it. If I blog, as much as I may try to keep a low profile (avoiding last names, adopting pseudonyms, trying not to call too much attention to myself by jumping onto the commenting-so-that-people-visit-your-website-and-check-out-what-you-have-to-say bandwagon), the word will get out. I'll get sloppy. It's bound to happen.
But I've never been a keeper of diaries. I'm not in this simply to catalog my daily goings-on. The public nature of blogging intrigues me. When the time is right, I'll be eager to engage the world, or at least that portion of it that is interested in hearing what I have to say, in a dialogue. I want to do this for all the reasons so eloquently articulated by Misguided Mommy. Even if it means opening myself up to unsolicited assvice.
I can't recall where I first heard this explanation, but someone once said that if you dislike someone, the way he holds his fork can drive you insane, whereas if you love him, he can upend his plate of pasta and dump it in your lap, and it won't matter at all. I guess blogging is like that. Some people pour their hearts and souls into their blogs and the dividends they get on their investments are nonexistent; they get shot down and ridiculed by the blogosphere. Other people can write two-sentence quips about what they had for dinner, or about how they didn't get out of their PJ's all weekend and refused to wash their hair, and their literary stylings are such that they can quit their day jobs and pay the mortgage with the ad revenue realized from their blogging efforts.
I want to be in the latter category. Not necessarily for the potential untapped financial gain to be had. I just want to write something that means something to someone. Something that I can be proud of. And something that helps other people, or motivates them, or moves them, or induces empathy, or makes them think, or makes me friends.
After all, I met the Mister online. And he's my best friend in the world. If the Internet led me to him, then I have to figure that there are experiences I won't have, other wonderful people I won't meet, and things I won't learn unless I put myself out there. Even if not everything I have to say is genius. Even if some of it is downright dull.
NaBloPoMo -- National Blog Posting Month 2007 -- will take place in November. I think I'll give it a try. In fact, I'm going to treat next month as a dry run. I'm not sure that volume = quality content, but I am sure that not posting means I'll never give myself a chance to find out if I have something worth saying.
It's the same way I taught myself how to take pictures. I never took a photography class. I just went out and took a bunch of pictures. And then I took some more. I saw what came out, and what looked like crap, and learned from my mistakes. I may not be great now, but a higher percentage of my photos are keepers than used to be the case. If blogging proceeds at the same pace, then it's better to indulge the urge to post whenever it may strike, rather than be stymied by self-censorship. It'll be an interesting experiment.
More soon....
My preferred method of communication with my nearest and dearest these days is e-mail. I write epic e-mails. I wax hyperbolic about everything and nothing. And yet, when it comes time to blog -- to discuss the same sorts of miscellaneous life experiences I e-mail friends about daily -- I have writer's block.
Maybe it's the knowledge that this blog could gain a life of its own and, as I think I've written before, who knows who could wind up reading it. After all, with a little creative Googling, it's not too hard to track down former high school nemeses, friends with whom we've lost touch, old colleagues, our exes, our significant others' exes, our exes' significant others, and so on. We like to think that our e-mails never reach any destinations other than the eyes of the readers for whom we intend our messages. More often than not, they probably don't. But blogging? Blogging is putting something out there for everything to see.
After all, as recently as this past week, I read the story of a favorite blogging family of mine: a photograph they'd taken of their daughter had been used by an online parenting website in conjunction with an article about the dangers of lead paint. Used with neither their knowledge nor consent. That's unacceptable. That sort of thing gives me pause; it make me think twice before continuing with this blogging effort.
If all I want to do is keep a journal, I don't need a blog on which to do it. If I blog, as much as I may try to keep a low profile (avoiding last names, adopting pseudonyms, trying not to call too much attention to myself by jumping onto the commenting-so-that-people-visit-your-website-and-check-out-what-you-have-to-say bandwagon), the word will get out. I'll get sloppy. It's bound to happen.
But I've never been a keeper of diaries. I'm not in this simply to catalog my daily goings-on. The public nature of blogging intrigues me. When the time is right, I'll be eager to engage the world, or at least that portion of it that is interested in hearing what I have to say, in a dialogue. I want to do this for all the reasons so eloquently articulated by Misguided Mommy. Even if it means opening myself up to unsolicited assvice.
I can't recall where I first heard this explanation, but someone once said that if you dislike someone, the way he holds his fork can drive you insane, whereas if you love him, he can upend his plate of pasta and dump it in your lap, and it won't matter at all. I guess blogging is like that. Some people pour their hearts and souls into their blogs and the dividends they get on their investments are nonexistent; they get shot down and ridiculed by the blogosphere. Other people can write two-sentence quips about what they had for dinner, or about how they didn't get out of their PJ's all weekend and refused to wash their hair, and their literary stylings are such that they can quit their day jobs and pay the mortgage with the ad revenue realized from their blogging efforts.
I want to be in the latter category. Not necessarily for the potential untapped financial gain to be had. I just want to write something that means something to someone. Something that I can be proud of. And something that helps other people, or motivates them, or moves them, or induces empathy, or makes them think, or makes me friends.
After all, I met the Mister online. And he's my best friend in the world. If the Internet led me to him, then I have to figure that there are experiences I won't have, other wonderful people I won't meet, and things I won't learn unless I put myself out there. Even if not everything I have to say is genius. Even if some of it is downright dull.
NaBloPoMo -- National Blog Posting Month 2007 -- will take place in November. I think I'll give it a try. In fact, I'm going to treat next month as a dry run. I'm not sure that volume = quality content, but I am sure that not posting means I'll never give myself a chance to find out if I have something worth saying.
It's the same way I taught myself how to take pictures. I never took a photography class. I just went out and took a bunch of pictures. And then I took some more. I saw what came out, and what looked like crap, and learned from my mistakes. I may not be great now, but a higher percentage of my photos are keepers than used to be the case. If blogging proceeds at the same pace, then it's better to indulge the urge to post whenever it may strike, rather than be stymied by self-censorship. It'll be an interesting experiment.
More soon....
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