Reasons for Blogging

M: I wanted to ask you, what do you want out of your blog? do you have goals for it, audiences you would like to reach, etc?
Me: well I don't know...
I don't entirely remember why I started up the blog but it was just before my wife and the kids went away for three weeks - she was the matron of honor at the wedding of her best friend back home and the bachelorette party, the wedding shower and the actual wedding were scheduled one weekend after the next so it made more sense for her to stay down there than travel 7 hours one way repeatedly for every weekend. But when she was gone I got lonely and melancholic and I'm not sure if depressed was the right word, but I had a lot of time on my hands.
I think that's when I really started putting more effort into recording my thoughts.
I seem to remember a time in college where I was having all these insights about life that I have since incorporated into my understanding of LUE that I haven't entirely forgot but I don't remember all the details.
I think the title of the blog is really what I'm trying to do. I think I'm trying to walk around the boundaries of my mind and just figure out what it all means. Well not entirely, but I've gotten down a lot of the outlines of many things I think are important. I haven't fleshed out a lot of the details - a bit here and there. I've also went in directions I didn't expect with gender roles which for whatever reason comes up a lot in here and I will probably post this conversation as well.
I do talk a lot about religion and reality and science and life and I was actually in the middle of a post right now when you asked the question.
I don't have any goals for the site that I'm aware of but I have told several people about the site and I think there's some self interest in who I've told
Interestingly enough I haven't told any of my male friends, although I really have no objection to anyone reading the blog.
The only way you'd know who's blog it was if someone told you.
M: Myself, I think that's how blogs should operate - not that anonymity is key, but the personality & mentality is all that matters, not whether or not you find someone attractive, or could run into them in your local grocery store.
But I'm a traditionalist (if one can be a traditionalist about blogging!)
Me: I don't think I'm trying to reach anyone in particular, but I think the people I've told about the blog are people I think are open to ... me?
Does that make sense?
M: But still - why are you sharing it? What motivates you to define to yourself what your opinions/thoughts/feelings are, and then make that public knowledge (even if it can't be traced back to you by those who don't know you)?
You could write letters; or even long emails to a mailing list of your friends. Why the Internet?
I'm just curious! Blogging has always scared the pants off me because of the public opinion thing.
Me: It scared me too!
The thing is I first started a blog to put my family pictures and I saw how easy it was. It also kept a permanent record of the pics and anyone could get to them.
Right away I realized that if I were to ever start a blog I wouldn't want my parents reading it
I have friends (who read this blog) who do blog to let their families know what they are up to but I'm not one of them.
I never kept a journal before and when I write with pen and paper I find it too confining. Typing lets me play with words and sentences and has a freedom that I don't feel when I write. I don't think it helps that I have horrible handwriting and I can't often interpret my own scratches but with this medium I have a place to take note of the things that interest me and I'll always know where they are.
I think that realization didn't come with the blog but it developed over time
I don't know what I was trying to do.
If you look at the earliest entries they read like I don't have a clue and I didn't (I still don't have completely clear idea of what I'm doing) but I think if you were to start a blog you would eventually settle on something that works for you.
M: Hm - I understand the different way writing works on a keyboard & screen rather than pen & paper; yet still - there is this element of automatic audience that really interests me
Simply because it's a public space. like, a journal? unless I publish it, or someone sneaks a look, it's intended for no audience but my own later self. If I did publish the journal, even if no one read it, I would be changing the relationship of my writing to the world
Me: An audience is not automatic!
There's not guarantee that anyone will stick around
M: well yeah - an audience is presupposed (even if one never shows up *Grin* )
Me: LOL well you can track that; I do get random hits from countries around the world.
I have no idea who they are exactly although when I get hits from Ithaca and other specific places I have some idea who's in those locations
M: Cool. Where have you had hits from?
Me: India, Argentina, Mexico, to name a few.
M: I do like the Internet
Me: :-)
Me: Well I think there's probably an element of narcissism in here. I mean, again, if you look at the limited invited audience I think that maybe I'm trying to get the people who I've invited to look at this a short cut to realize there's more to me than you might get at first glance. Why I've done that I have no idea, but I'm acknowledging the possible existence of such factors.
I don't know what making myself and the people I know who are reading the blog aware of my own failings does but I know that I'm learning of it. I try to be brutally honest with myself on this thing and I guess there's a risk that I might end up hurting myself and maybe some of the readers but so far the level or potential hurt is minimal or non-existent. And I admit there is some self-censorship that I recognized early
*shrug*
M: Sure - but all forms of expression come with that. I don't know if it's narcissism to want people to know you better - you're making it easier for them to really connect with you. If all you ever wrote about on your site - and many people do this - was yourself, OK. But what have any of us got to share with the world but what we think & feel?
And narcissism in this context might imply a sense of gain, or desire for gain; and that you haven't got either
Me: Well I want your love and approval
*grin*
M: You have it! That was easy! :)
Me: I want you to love and approve of me more
:-)
M: Ha!
Me: But of course, there's no guarantee that anyone will read whatever I'm typing and love and approve of me more. I mean I'm not exactly saying things that are endearing. I mean, who cares about dark matter and the existence of god in the same breath.
M: um, Phillip Pullman? :P
Me: LOL, good point, but I don't think he's reading the blog.
I do think I've benefited from having a place to put my thoughts down in.
My friend who blogs for her family has a great site and I always enjoy reading what she has to say about her family and her observations and pictures but I couldn't write the kind of blog she has.
This one is me.
Very, very me.
And I like having it all in one place now.
M: I'm glad you feel your blog IS very you - that's important. I feel it's very you but I don't know you as well!
Me: Eell hopefully you know me better after having read it but that said this is at a level that might turn many people off.
M: Back to my question about audience. Who would you want reading who would also be turned off by its current level of intimacy?
Me: Good question...
The people who I have told about it are people who's opinions I respect very much and whom I like very much. That doesn't mean that I don't like or respect the people I haven't mentioned this site too. I think I have a particular connection to the people I have mentioned the site too
but again, the "audience" is still just me.
I'm perambulating.
But did I answer your question?
M: I think so. though still - I don't think the real audience is yourself, or it wouldn't be public.
Me: Well its not public
M: I hope I'm not being too much of a nudge - I am just fascinated by ownership, audience, expression etc
Me: No, no, this is a fascinating discussion, and I will be posting it. :-)
M: Do only those people can see it to whom you send the link?
Me: No anyone can go to the site, but its more semi-private than public in that if you were to stumble across it you would have no idea who's site it was. That, and I hide the identities of the people I talk about in the postings.
Well I think I'm writing it as a record or my thoughts because I found my self trying to recall exactly what it was I had come up with the last time I was on a thinking binge and I couldn't remember the details.
Frankly if everyone stopped reading the blog now, I'd still keep posting.
M: Wow - that's great. Maybe I should keep one! I haven't been writing much recently
Usually writing helps me think things through, really process what's going on in my life, but lately I've been too emotionally exhausted for the further emotional exertion of working it out.
Me: Well another advantage of a blog is you can't lose it - unless Google goes out of business...
M: he he