I was talking with Emily G. recently about the difference between reading a friend's blog and getting an individual update on that friend's life--and concluding that blogging has its own merits beyond just convenience. When you're talking one-on-one with someone you're tailoring your version of your life to the other person's interests, knowledge, and all the experience you have in common. That meeting-in-the-middle is kind of an amazing thing we humans can do, and in a way it's what makes friendships worth having.
But on a blog, where you're writing for a more amorphous audience, the tendency is to represent your life as you yourself actually experience it. Even if you're not saying anything that seems particularly revealing, you're building up a picture of the texture of your life that is almost shocking in its inability to be inaccurate (because whatever the truth content of the actual narratives you're writing, you're automatically showing what's on your mind). There's a level of intimacy that this creates that is very different from what you get from an in-person friendship--reading people's blogs, you get to know them as they know themselves.
And by writing a blog, you get a peculiar kind of insight into your own life. It makes you notice what you notice. For instance, I was thinking today about how to blog about what I was doing, which was utterly insignificant and nothing I would have any reason to talk about or remember: laundry, wearing my new sunglasses, nostalgically listening to Jimmy Buffett who was in my life a lot in my freshman year of college (because I was on the sailing team and also because my timid and anorexic roommate played "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw" on repeat for an entire week), thinking about the camp I used to work at because it was very important to me during that period of my life, and feeling because of all of these things the good mood that I always have when it seems like summer is coming. And because I was thinking about writing all this down for others to read, I was feeling a kind of tenderness toward my own experience as I was having it that was very pleasant.
And that's why you should start your own blog.
2 comments:
I had fallen behind, I admit, but now I'm on top of the stove, so to speak. I have been wondering why people blog, and this is an interesting explanation. It's true that your blog is very recognizable as you. Would it be very different if it were a diary?
And what did you do on Feb 10 that never thought you would do??
I love this entry, and it rings true. For me writing in a blog would be different than writing in a diary because I need an audience in mind when I write. But even writing a letter to a friend gives me enough of an audience and also enough time and imaginitive freedom to allow me to represent my life as I actually experience it. To my mind, the difference between blogging and writing a letter is that blogging allows you to worry less about the relevance of your subjects and to omit the always bizarre questions and speculations about the other person's life that won't be answered on the same page. In other words, a blog encourages you to be self-centered.
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