Is It Ever a Good Idea to Quote "Mr. and Mrs. Smith"?
"I guess that's what happens at the end, you start thinking about the beginning."
Is it possible to suffer from an online identity crisis? I really suspect so. Our online selves are often carefully, painstakingly cultivated (and possibly bear no relation to our IRL selves!) that when you start to wonder about some of what you're putting "out there," it's easy to really start to question EVERYTHING you're putting out there.
And there's so much "Everything." LiveJournal, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram...to mention nothing of all options for blogging there are...it's easy to follow into the black hole of the Internet and use all of them as an expression of Self. So much everything! So much self!
I'm one of those firm believers in making the Internet my bitch, rather than the other way around. I love Facebook for keeping in touch with my peeps, I love Pinterest for ideas and visual inspiration that I will never pursue, I love Instagram for documenting the visual evidence of my day-to-day life. But for blogging...if I am honest, I've been dissatisfied with my blogging for a good long while. Is it because I dislike my voice? My platform? My motives? Or is it because I am nostalgic for the good ol' LJ days?
Every time before, when I acknowledged my dissatisfaction for my blogging, I tried to tell myself, "Well, just write for you, and don't care if anyone is reading it." And then I'd do some dumb shit like change my blog name or template or color scheme and think that a frigging facelift is the answer. And then I'd falll into the same old blogging rut.
I'm there again. I hate my voice, I don't know what to talk about, everything is so trite, blah blah blah.
But last night, when going over the LJs of old friends, for a personal scrapbook project, I noticed something--it was the trite minutiae of their lives that I found the most interesting. And maybe that's what I need to be focusing on: the seemingly inconsequential details of my quotidian existence. Maybe I won't give a flip now, but I don't know how I'm going to feel a few years or decades down the road.
I'd like to treat my days and the details of them like something to be treasured and preserved. And maybe that's as simple and as complicated as I need to make it. And maybe I should end my blogging identity crisis at the beginning, where it all began.
Is it possible to suffer from an online identity crisis? I really suspect so. Our online selves are often carefully, painstakingly cultivated (and possibly bear no relation to our IRL selves!) that when you start to wonder about some of what you're putting "out there," it's easy to really start to question EVERYTHING you're putting out there.
And there's so much "Everything." LiveJournal, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram...to mention nothing of all options for blogging there are...it's easy to follow into the black hole of the Internet and use all of them as an expression of Self. So much everything! So much self!
I'm one of those firm believers in making the Internet my bitch, rather than the other way around. I love Facebook for keeping in touch with my peeps, I love Pinterest for ideas and visual inspiration that I will never pursue, I love Instagram for documenting the visual evidence of my day-to-day life. But for blogging...if I am honest, I've been dissatisfied with my blogging for a good long while. Is it because I dislike my voice? My platform? My motives? Or is it because I am nostalgic for the good ol' LJ days?
Every time before, when I acknowledged my dissatisfaction for my blogging, I tried to tell myself, "Well, just write for you, and don't care if anyone is reading it." And then I'd do some dumb shit like change my blog name or template or color scheme and think that a frigging facelift is the answer. And then I'd falll into the same old blogging rut.
I'm there again. I hate my voice, I don't know what to talk about, everything is so trite, blah blah blah.
But last night, when going over the LJs of old friends, for a personal scrapbook project, I noticed something--it was the trite minutiae of their lives that I found the most interesting. And maybe that's what I need to be focusing on: the seemingly inconsequential details of my quotidian existence. Maybe I won't give a flip now, but I don't know how I'm going to feel a few years or decades down the road.
I'd like to treat my days and the details of them like something to be treasured and preserved. And maybe that's as simple and as complicated as I need to make it. And maybe I should end my blogging identity crisis at the beginning, where it all began.