![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ahh, the glorious land of navelgazing.
A few years ago, I encouraged a friend to take up blogging, as I thought she had interesting ideas and I've found blogging to be a good forum for getting those ideas out of my head and into the ether, where they can be picked up or discarded as the world sees fit. At some point later on, she decided to close her blog, and it wasn't until very recently that I finally had a chance to ask why and hear what she had to say. It seems that a couple of factors were at play, including a feeling that all of the blog entries were turning into brags about amazing and wonderful adventures, and the feeling that many of those entries were creepily one-sided experiences. A conflict of audience, I suppose one could say.
Whether I like it or not (I'm ambivalent), and whether I'm proud of it or not (I'm not), I use my blog as a form of social interaction. You can tell that by the sudden upticks in entries when I get back to Texas and don't have many people to talk to. Clearly, a lot of that social interaction is unidirectional; I write stuff and your eyes pass over it (I used to jokingly declare that my entire audience consisted of two people, myself and my father). But then I'm often (pleasantly) surprised by the things that actually turn conversational. As with friendships, I've never aspired to have an especially popular blog. Instead, quality of relationships matters more to me. I've known many of you for years, if not my entire life, though I've also enjoyed getting to know the newer readers who have engaged in conversation.
I haven't read back over old blog entries in a very long time. I have, however, gone back over old photographs from previous eras, and I often look up old recipes. In contrast, my paper journal invites me to revisit previous times whenever I open it; the current journal falls open to a page where I inserted a brochure from the Arizona State University Health Services entitled "So You Have Mono: Taking the Next Step." Fitting, as that was a rather important experience for my understanding of how the world works.
Oddly, I haven't written much that's new in the paper journal in the last couple of years. I've never kept a regular schedule when it comes to journaling, instead relying on momentary inspiration to write. The largest reason I can identify for the lack of writing in the paper journal is that I have generally used it to write about insecurities, which, by definition, are things I'm not entirely comfortable sharing with anybody else.
A few years ago, I encouraged a friend to take up blogging, as I thought she had interesting ideas and I've found blogging to be a good forum for getting those ideas out of my head and into the ether, where they can be picked up or discarded as the world sees fit. At some point later on, she decided to close her blog, and it wasn't until very recently that I finally had a chance to ask why and hear what she had to say. It seems that a couple of factors were at play, including a feeling that all of the blog entries were turning into brags about amazing and wonderful adventures, and the feeling that many of those entries were creepily one-sided experiences. A conflict of audience, I suppose one could say.
Whether I like it or not (I'm ambivalent), and whether I'm proud of it or not (I'm not), I use my blog as a form of social interaction. You can tell that by the sudden upticks in entries when I get back to Texas and don't have many people to talk to. Clearly, a lot of that social interaction is unidirectional; I write stuff and your eyes pass over it (I used to jokingly declare that my entire audience consisted of two people, myself and my father). But then I'm often (pleasantly) surprised by the things that actually turn conversational. As with friendships, I've never aspired to have an especially popular blog. Instead, quality of relationships matters more to me. I've known many of you for years, if not my entire life, though I've also enjoyed getting to know the newer readers who have engaged in conversation.
I haven't read back over old blog entries in a very long time. I have, however, gone back over old photographs from previous eras, and I often look up old recipes. In contrast, my paper journal invites me to revisit previous times whenever I open it; the current journal falls open to a page where I inserted a brochure from the Arizona State University Health Services entitled "So You Have Mono: Taking the Next Step." Fitting, as that was a rather important experience for my understanding of how the world works.
Oddly, I haven't written much that's new in the paper journal in the last couple of years. I've never kept a regular schedule when it comes to journaling, instead relying on momentary inspiration to write. The largest reason I can identify for the lack of writing in the paper journal is that I have generally used it to write about insecurities, which, by definition, are things I'm not entirely comfortable sharing with anybody else.
