Today someone asked me why I blog. I looked at her blankly and said something inane like 'for posterity' then she said 'does it bother you that someone else might read it?'. I laughed and said that apart from the friends and family that read it I know for a fact that a couple of people I've never even met read it too. She looked terrified by that. Then she said...and this is where she stopped me short.....'so do you censor it to suit the readers or are you completely yourself?'. I think I then gave a speech about my blog being for me and that people reading it and commenting or emailing about it was a nice bonus but in the end it's my blog and I can say whatever I like and if anyone didn't like it I'm sure they'd stop reading and I'm fine with that. She smiled...a little knowingly I thought...and changed the subject.
Whoa.
And now I'm wondering. Am I myself on my blog or some watered down version of myself hoping not to offend anyone? I do have a bit of a history of sometimes worrying about what people think and I realised that I may be doing it again....though perhaps not consciously (until now).
It's made me ponder this whole blogging thing really, why do it? Why not just buy a nice journal and write everything in it instead of plastering it all over the internet for the world to see? Or just blog and make it private. What has really thrown me here is that I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M DOING THIS!!! I thought I knew (keeping a record, communicating with friends that I don't see very often) but is that it?
I don't know and suddenly it all seems a bit silly.
4 comments:
But if you'd never blogged how would you have met me?
That's reason enough for anyone.
How very true Dave, I hadn't thought of that.
What a dull place the world would be without your entertaining posts and regular nagging.
Dave's right. And I say so having met him...
And when I meet another blogger, there is bound to be some point at which we wonder aloud why we do this strange thing, and the unexpected bonus of making friends. Then we agree that we know more about each other than most of our long-term friends do. And that seems both peculiar and quite all right, at the same time. It is silly, but there doesn't seem to me to be anything wrong with that.
You're right Z, there isn't anything wrong with it. I'm all for doing something for no other reason than meeting nice people...oh and of course the silliness of it.
It's just that blogging sneaked up on me a bit with all that.
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