Livejournal Blogging? Why Bother?

[shadowkat]

I wonder sometimes why we blog? Or even bother? Why do I? We define it so differently or appear to, much like everything else.

LJ is interesting because few of us are doing it under our real names, so few of our readers have a clue who we are and people offline that we know in various aspects of our lives most likely don't even know our blog exists.

Case in point:

CW: I'm sorry I've never read your blog.
ME: Well, that's unlikely, since I don't blog under my real name and I've never told you the pseudonyme or where it is. Sort of impossible for you to have read it.
CW has a look of shock on her face.

Co-worker: I blog under a psuedonyme.
ME: Me too.
Co-worker: Mostly to ensure my Mom never finds it.

It can be weirdly painful to blog. Because let's face it, you will piss people off. This will happen. It is predetermined. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow...but it will happen. Sometimes intentionally sometimes not. Particularly if you are honest, write about cultural stuff and fellow fans and whatever floats your boat, and not just about what you did today (although that can piss people off too...you'd be amazed at how violently passionate someone can become over the proper method of cooking brussle sprouts. I hear roasting works best. Personally, not a fan of brussle sprouts (can't even spell the damn word) but I wouldn't make too much of that, not a fan of operatic sopranos either.)


You will also have people defriend you. Sometimes ban you - although that happens rarely and only if you get into a knock-out, drag-out fight with the host on more than one occasion. Hint? Really bad idea to attack a host who has told you up-front they are having a bad day or is in mid-rant mode. Let's just say rational thought is most likely not in the building at the moment. (Sort of similar to being banned on a fan board actually - piss off the moderator or moderators unduly, you are gone, bucko. And frankly? Just between us? You probably did a few things to deserve it. Although not all moderators are like this. I've met a few insanely tolerant ones. I admire the insanely tolerant ones.)

We all want comments. Although comments can be...frustrating. Some days I think...might be better to disable the comments. A lot of people on my flist have been doing that lately. Can't say I blame them. Because often when people comment...they twist it to being about well them. Not to say, I don't do the same thing, I do, all the frigging time. Or that commenting can be frightening at times. I don't know about anyone else? But I have a tendency to comment without always thinking it through - or off the cuff. And I'm betting on lj with all the language differences...this may lead to a lot of unnecessary misunderstandings. Which are easy enough to see in retrospect, not so much though at the time. Plus? I tend to over-state things on the internet. Or say things because it sounds good in a sentence or I like the turn of phrase...not always attentive to the meaning. I fall in love with the poetic rhythm and forget, that interpretation is key particularly with language barriers and differences in syntax, semantics, etc. [Ironically, when I take a lot of time to frame a comment, really work on it, write it in word first, post it, it's ignored. Highly frustrating.]

Have you ever had a knock-out, drag-out fight over the meaning of a word? And with someone from another country and another culture who uses English as a second language, and speaks a language you don't know, and is 20 years younger or older, and from half way across the world? It's a very weird experience when you think about it. While at the time you are having the fight? You don't know any of the above, nor do they. You are basically just two strangers fighting about a word on the net. And yet, at the same time, you aren't. You know each other but you don't. Or you forget that you do.

I forget sometimes that txpetal67 is an actual person who is studying really hard, lonely, and worried about making ends meet, or lj user amerythzt09 is a woman with two kids, a hubby, and just had nervous breakdown. (I made those up, if you actually know someone with those names or those issues...it's not them.)

It's not so much that lj is public...because it is and it isn't. That's the problem. It's that - we don't know who is reading and who isn't reading even if we filter or flock. We don't know who knows us and who doesn't. And often we aren't even sure who are our real friends and who aren't. Which unfortunately is a lot like life now that I think about it. When we walk down the street inside our own heads - we tend to be oblivious to the world around us. Oh we might see the homeless person lying on the bench or the old lady selling yams, or the guy asking us to save planned parenthood, but we don't see everyone and everything. It's filtered. Nor are we aware of our effect on all of it, just by doing nothing more than walking down the street - we affect the world around us. Even if no one responds to this post, someone was bound to be affected by it, right?

I don't know who. If I delete it after I post it - someone may have read it first and reacted. I have no control over how they see the post or if they do or how they react, any more than I have much control over how people will react to me when I walk to the subway get on the train and go to work. A million different things can happen. So-called random events...and yet only from our insanely limited perspective.

I used to love looking at the threads on voy discussion boards. How they'd jump off of each other, go off into tangents, and wind down the side of a page. Life feels that way at times. Like a discussion thread that has gone bezerk and wandered off the page.

Last night...I dreamed about friends who had left my life. They all were in the dream in different guises...and it was painful waking up, yet not at the same time. For they no longer fit in my life and I know that. Online...and off...I've gained and lost. Back and forth and up and down. The losses feel like detached limbs, you know they are gone, yet they ache anyways. Often the people I picked, didn't stick, and people I didn't pick who I initially was turned off by, did and I've become close to. Making me wonder about my taste in people or my own ability to make decisions? Also it makes me wish there were spoilers to our own lives. That we could see what would happen if we missed our train. Or what would happen if we didn't post a blog on the internet or if we did, ahead of time. Hindsight is 20/20 or so they say.

I don't know the answers. I only have questions. I find dealing with people exhilarating, hilarious, wonderful and sometimes, frankly, downright frustrating. People fascinate me. Why we do what we do. Why we hurt each other and ourselves...mostly without meaning to. I wish sometimes I could control my own rage and frustration - it gets me into so much trouble. And I'll read an old post that I did ...and I'll think, shit, that's self-righteous, damn, why I'd write that. I wonder sometimes if I'm the only one who feels these things, this sense of...bewildering confusion and uncertainity...as if life and everything entangled in it is just a weird puzzle or lock that I've lost the key to somewhere along the way. If only I found the key, it would make sense, and everything would fall into place.

I realize reading fan posts...that often fans cling to cultural obsessions as a means of clinging to sanity. To hope. To a life-line.

I know so little about what happens in people's lives. And they know so little about what is happening in mine. And yet, we all judge each other so harshly. I'm not the only one surely. When I write or blog, I don't know if anyone else feels this way too? It feels like there's thousands of eyes picking it apart, waiting to jump. Other times...I am barely aware of them. And others...I feel as if I'm just trying to reach through the ether to another weary soul who at this particular point in time, at this hour, this minute thinks or feels like I do. Who is equally afraid of the...blankness without and within. Of the white noise. Of being adrift. Uncertain of the future.

Comments

[owenthurman.livejournal.com]

I cut them in half, then I press warm butter and sliced garlic into the spaces, sprinkle salt and lemon juice, wrap in tin foil, and roast at 325 until I can smell them cooking.

I used to write a real name blog that I posted to frequently. It was occasionally controversial, but always careful. I post an occasional fandom related thing to LJ. I would never even admit to my friends or family what sort of thing I read here here, much less what I write.

My ex used to ask me what I was writing on my secret blog. I never even hinted, thank goodness.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

I cut off the "stem" end, then I cut them in half. I fill a roasting pan with one layer of sprouts, then use olive oil to coat them. Not too much or they'll get soggy, but they do need to have oil on them. Then add some salt and roast at 350 for an hour and a half.

I absolutely hated brussels sprouts until I learned to roast them, but they're delicious this way.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Alrighty then, at some point I need to try roasted brussels sprouts. And why is it that no matter how I spell this word stupid lj is determined to tell me I spelled it wrong?

[sophist.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy to make you some, but I'm 3,000 miles away and I doubt the shipping would improve them.

LOL on the spelling. I have the same problem.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

No, probably not (on brussel sprouts not the spelling). ;-)