It’s 1:00 AM and I promised myself I’d do better than last night’s 4:00 AM bedtime tonight. After awhile, waking up tired gets OLD.
I’ve been having an ongoing dialogue with a co-worker about the value of blogs. I am such a serious advocate of online communities (mostly message boards) that to me, blogging was the absurd equivalent of talking to myself. If I wanted to talk to myself, why not just look in the mirror and start yammering? Why make the effort to actually sit down, type it, edit it, format it and publish it?
Until a few weeks ago, my main exposure to blogs was reading Drummerboy’s friends’ Xangas, just to kind of keep up on what’s going on in Teenland. I managed to pick through the awful grammar, spelling, language and rebellious insistence on using the uPPer cAsE letters in the wrong place, getting to know some of them pretty well through what they were writing and in some cases, starting to be afraid for them. Some were coping with cutting; others with eating disorders, still others with depression. It’s a lot harder to be a teen today — the angst is just…deeper. The angst is deeper but the writing is barely tolerable. It’s as bad as reading personal ads.
Which brings me to the stated other reason I was anti-blog: I wasn’t all that anxious for anyone I actually KNEW to get to know me all that well. I’m not sure I was all that anxious to get to know ME that well. It’s one thing to think things and entirely another to actually articulate them. Being the type that will think something seriously and then absolutely trash the thought the moment it was spoken, the prospect of writing in a blog seemed to guarantee handing over thoughts to be trashed. Given my lack of enthusiasm for self- discovery it didn’t come as a surprise that I wasn’t dying for others to discover me.
Underneath the spoken objection was the true unspoken objection. In all of us, there’s a desire to be heard. In a conversation, a give and take, we are heard, if not listened to. Posting in a blog does not presume one will be heard. Just consider the growth rate of blogs in 2005 alone! The foundation of the fear of being known was really the fear of being unknown. Far more primal. No human lives on this planet in total silence without having at least one passionate thought that bubbles up for the benefit of others around her, and I am no exception. So really…at the root of everything, under all the excuses, it really just came down to not wanting to risk being unheard.
The decision was made for me when two events occurred within a month of one another. The first was a dialogue via email about the value of blogs and my perception that they were worthless; the second was a challenge to experiment with them. Being somewhat contrarian but always up for a challenge, it seemed like the time was right to give it a go.
I am sure that I am driving those friends and co-workers who argued with me for the value of blogs crazy with my 180-degree turnaround. Tough. Being typically “ADHD in hyperfocus”, it’s not enough just to have the blog, now I have to READ all the other blogs and figure out how mine can be read. Still working on that, but I have some excellent role models to follow. Just check the blogroll!
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