Why I write (here).
The cover story of the next issue of the New York Times Magazine is about blogging. I've already read it, and while it tails off and goes mostly into personal details after a point, I relate really, really well to at least parts of the first page:
Some of my blog’s readers were my friends in real life, and even the ones who weren’t acted like friends when they posted comments or sent me e-mail. They criticized me sometimes, but kindly, the way you chide someone you know well. Some of them had blogs, too, and I read those and left my own comments. As nerdy and one-dimensional as my relationships with these people were, they were important to me. They made me feel like a part of some kind of community, and that made the giant city I lived in seem smaller and more manageable.
People have asked me before why I write in my LJ as much, or as often as I do, and this is a part of it. Feeling like I have a support network, even if it's just for something as small as I fucked up at work, or my dinner is ruined, helps. I've said this to bee_york before - in some ways, LJ (and blogs in general) is like high school: there are cliques and actual circles of friends, and there are people that you just sort of see... around. But it's also like high school in that, if you want friends to sympathize with you because of something like, say, your team lost or your VCR didn't tape the last episode of American Idol (or something more serious), you can have that. Because it's like a circle of friends that you see - every, single day.
I think the best bit in the article (and by 'best', I mean, the part that I most get) is this:
I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept - a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. Sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. In real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the Internet makes it seem O.K.
This is even more true since I started living alone. Most days, excluding the people I see at work, the only place where people who really care about me can see me is online. And I'm comforted by the thought that if I went away from being online for a while totally and completely - whether because I was depressed or tired of writing or whatever - people might notice. People might care. And some of them would even think to check up on me. They might check up on me in the same way if, for instance, mail and newspapers started piling up on someone's doorstep, one of their neighbours or friends would hopefully think to ring the doorbell or make a phone call to make sure everything was okay.
So LJ/blogs work for me in those ways. But, I can also see myself in the author's anecdote on the first page about fighting with her boyfriend over her blog's content. Fighting with someone (and in certain cases, fighting with myself) for the right to express myself and to describe the world that I experience is a feeling that I can relate to:
After a standoff, he conceded that I should be allowed to put the post back up. As he sulked in the other room, I retyped what I’d written, feeling vindicated but slightly queasy for reasons I didn’t quite understand yet.
So yeah, I basically have a love/hate relationship with my own blog. But I'm pretty much addicted - that ship has sailed.
There are of course other reasons that I love and hate my blog. Maybe this post is the first of a series.
Why do you write the things you do here?
***
AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. SHOVELS IN THE GROUND NOW PLEASE.
***
ETA: Ooooo... this one looks nice! And I could walk to almost anywhere worth walkin' to...
Some of my blog’s readers were my friends in real life, and even the ones who weren’t acted like friends when they posted comments or sent me e-mail. They criticized me sometimes, but kindly, the way you chide someone you know well. Some of them had blogs, too, and I read those and left my own comments. As nerdy and one-dimensional as my relationships with these people were, they were important to me. They made me feel like a part of some kind of community, and that made the giant city I lived in seem smaller and more manageable.
People have asked me before why I write in my LJ as much, or as often as I do, and this is a part of it. Feeling like I have a support network, even if it's just for something as small as I fucked up at work, or my dinner is ruined, helps. I've said this to bee_york before - in some ways, LJ (and blogs in general) is like high school: there are cliques and actual circles of friends, and there are people that you just sort of see... around. But it's also like high school in that, if you want friends to sympathize with you because of something like, say, your team lost or your VCR didn't tape the last episode of American Idol (or something more serious), you can have that. Because it's like a circle of friends that you see - every, single day.
I think the best bit in the article (and by 'best', I mean, the part that I most get) is this:
I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept - a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. Sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. In real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the Internet makes it seem O.K.
This is even more true since I started living alone. Most days, excluding the people I see at work, the only place where people who really care about me can see me is online. And I'm comforted by the thought that if I went away from being online for a while totally and completely - whether because I was depressed or tired of writing or whatever - people might notice. People might care. And some of them would even think to check up on me. They might check up on me in the same way if, for instance, mail and newspapers started piling up on someone's doorstep, one of their neighbours or friends would hopefully think to ring the doorbell or make a phone call to make sure everything was okay.
So LJ/blogs work for me in those ways. But, I can also see myself in the author's anecdote on the first page about fighting with her boyfriend over her blog's content. Fighting with someone (and in certain cases, fighting with myself) for the right to express myself and to describe the world that I experience is a feeling that I can relate to:
After a standoff, he conceded that I should be allowed to put the post back up. As he sulked in the other room, I retyped what I’d written, feeling vindicated but slightly queasy for reasons I didn’t quite understand yet.
So yeah, I basically have a love/hate relationship with my own blog. But I'm pretty much addicted - that ship has sailed.
There are of course other reasons that I love and hate my blog. Maybe this post is the first of a series.
Why do you write the things you do here?
***
AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. SHOVELS IN THE GROUND NOW PLEASE.
***
ETA: Ooooo... this one looks nice! And I could walk to almost anywhere worth walkin' to...