Partially influenced by me, a student recently started a blog. She’s enthusiastic, but I overheard a colleague tell her, “You must have a lot of time on your hands.”
I wonder about that, do we take time from our real lives to do this narcissistic thing? I regularly dip into about a dozen blogs, but no one’s story is worth reading every day. No writer or image-maker can sustain that kind of interest. Sometimes an interesting narrative arc develops (and we may not even be aware of it as we are writing), but other times our lives are filled with mundane details that would only interest a sociologist.
What’s the value of blogging? For me, who has always kept journals, it gives an order to my days and months. I see threads, I think about bigger stories, I keep my eye above my petty anxieties while I’m experiencing them. It’s like free therapy.
I don’t read blogs of my on-ground friends. I like to hear what’s happening with them over coffee. I somehow feel it’s a violation of privacy for me to read about them without them knowing about it.
So to my flesh-n-blooders, sorry, but please tell me in person (better yet, read me poetry, a theme in my life right now). And you know not to tell me that you read this, right?
sculpture by Andy Goldsworthy
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