Thursday, June 01, 2006

Are you this way because you blog? Or do you blog because you are this way?


One of my favorite bloggers, Petite Anglaise, asks here in a recent post if her readers feel they have changed now that they blog. Good question. And though I don't think she intended it as a meme, I thought I'd borrow her question and both answer it for myself and pose it to my reader(s).

I'll begin by way of a brief anecdote: one day when I returned from my walk with Scruffy, Mrs. Meridian asked me what I liked best about the route he and I take. My response was, "Well, I've gotten some good blog posts out of it." Which is mostly true.

What that has to do with my answer to Ms. Anglaise's question is that I've always noticed in myself a tendency to note and then mull over not just the unusual but, more often than not, the mundane, the quotidian. All that's really changed is that I put some of that mulling here. To the response of "Why not just retire to your garret and fill up notebooks with that crap about Clothes Care Centers and cakes abandoned in parks?" I say, well, something else that had caused my journal-writing in the past to just fizzle out but didn't understand before was that my writing and thinking benefit, as does that of most people, from interaction with others. So for me, blogging has less to do with a certain kind of exhibitionism or self-obsession than with the desire and need for comments from others, sympathetic or not.

So: I would say, in answer to the question I pose in the title, "I blog because I am this way." Whether that's reassurring or disconcerting for you to decide.
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5 comments:

Andrew Simone said...

What I find interesting from your reflections, particularly your musing over the mundane which is quite similar to what the good preacher should do. For a great sermon takes the mundane and the common and shows its relationship to the holy and divine.

Anonymous said...

Are you this way because you blog? Or do you blog because you are this way?

My answer is an emphatic YES. Like you I have always had an eye for the unusual, the mundane, the subtle. Blogging provides the forum, the vehicle for my commentaries on those oddities I see. And the more I have blogged, the more I seem to see. It is as if the skill that has always been there has been aroused, honed and has become more active.

So, yes, with me I think it a circular phenomenon, feeding on itself. Chicken and egg, as it were...

Interesting question. Perhaps I'll go post the same at my place for my different set of readers. Should be interesting to see the spectrum of answers.

Anonymous said...

Well, as you know, I've thought about this sort of thing over on my own blog, most recently here.

Understandably, I probably wouldn't have thought about such matters if I hadn't had a blog to begin with. Take from that what you will...

AJ said...

You have a knack for asking these thought-provoking questions. I think I blog because I like to think out loud...but blogging has undoubtedly caused me to think more frequently and out-louder.

Andrew's comment hits the nail on the head, too. Connecting the mundane to the divine is part of the fascination of blogging for me.

Sine.Qua.Non said...

I have been writing in and commenting to various portals since the beginning of time, it seems. In any case, having my own website feels as if I can contain the compendium of all my desires, disputes, wishes, thoughts and criticisms all in one place. For a person like myself, one who likes to explore any and all topics and discussions, I like the medium and how it allows me this space in which to do all those things. I'm not sure where you could actually do that otherwise. All of this is floating around in my brain anyway, so I would have to agree with John's assessment. (It has other benfits and detriments besides. Like you wish you hadn't posted a particular item here and there.)