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Friday, December 15, 2006

Second thoughts about blogging

As some of you know, I occasionally post political items on my Democratic Party blog. Well, as I wrote to a friend this morning:
Damn, but my post on Bill Moyers's remarks at West Point continues (at this hour, at any rate) to be listed among the top five "highest rated posts" on the Democratic Party blog. Can you believe that? I find it hard to, although I of course do much appreciate it.
Light-heartedly, my friend responded:
Guess it doesn't hurt that your friends and workmates vote for you. Ha, just kidding. You have a rising future in the party.
And this gave rise to some reflections.

His mention of friends reminded me that I have received a couple of invitations from other Democratic bloggers requesting that I become their "friend" (each blogger can have a "friends list," although I'm not quite sure what that entails). I've noticed that some of the bloggers have a very long list of "friends."

While my ego likes the stroke of my having a post listed as highly rated, I am ambivalent about the accompanying pressure to put more time and energy into political blogging. I do need to concentrate on other things....At times, I even fantasize giving up blogging. Habitual blogging is like a millstone around my neck. Unfortunately it is also a lot of fun. I mean writing the items and "being published," at least in the evanescent web way. Still, all things considered, I mostly think that I need to step back and "simplify my life."

I wonder if any of you ever have such second thoughts?

9 comments:

  1. I checked out your Demo blog. Looks as if your recent fame has been replaced by others. May you get back up into the top 5.

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  2. That would be the very sort of quest, alas, that would fuel even more expenditure of time and energy into this suspect activity [of blogging].

    I continue to reflect on whether I really want to be doing this. In particular, I'm asking myself, Why am I doing this? And, What am I getting out it? I suspect that the answers, when I can find any, will give me some freeing insights into myself, into what motivates me. "Freeing," because I would expect to gain some freedom to decide whether to continue to be driven by those "whys," those "whats."

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  3. I think I'm already approaching an answer. Out later to do an errand, I reflected that recent posts have been more "exploratory" than usual of my own psyche and my motives for doing all sorts of things (attending parties, giving Christian evangelizers some push-back, deciding whether I'm an atheist or an agnostic, etc., etc.) so that, in effect, I seem to have been using blogging as a tool for what I might call "self-discovery."

    And then I remembered my current statement about who I am: "That's for us to find out"! It seems that a main reason I'm blogging is to facilitate that (and, unconsciously, it may always have been my main reason). If I concentrate more on "self-exploratory" posts than I have been, I might get more in the way of self-discovery out of the activity.

    Maybe I'll change my masthead from "A patriot must be ready..." to something like "A Journey of Self-discovery through Self-disclosure."

    Since self-discovery rarely comes without any effort, it would make sense to continue to invest time and energy in blogging in order to further that aim.

    And, thankfully, I see that it would make sense not to put something up every day just for the sake of having a daily post. I could relax a little and not sweat it if I went for a week without posting anything.

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  4. My Wright Brothers poem isn't self-disclosure, of course (unless it discloses that I'm capable of getting all squishy over an achievement such as theirs—I guess it isn't macho to get squishy <smile>), but I have long been planning to put it up on this anniversary of their historic first flight, which figures on most North Carolina license plates.

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  5. Ha! Without even intending (or trying) to, I have another post in the top five, and it's getting a lot more comments than the previous one did.

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  6. I've changed "self-disclosure" in my masthead to "self-exploration" and added the bit about my sense of writing's being a tool of discovery. Of course, I recognize that the word "essay" covers not only experiment in this sense but also pieces of writing that are anything but exploratory, in which the writer merely states his position or his view.

    Of course, I too have written "essays" like that. But for self-discovery, I mean to confine myself to the essay as a "try."

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  7. You are an interesting guy and I fear that, if I'm not careful, I could quickly wear out my welcome here, if I have not done so already.

    As to the purpose of blogging, I liken it to hanging a painting once you're done with it. Do people create artwork, and then tuck it out of sight? Not usually. Do they create artwork just to show it to others? No, again. But for me, posting my writing gives me incentive to do it, and the writing itself gives me pleasure. If I can connect with another person....well...that's just gravy.

    You may have other outlets for your writing. I don't, and so blogging consumes more of my time than I ever dreamed it would.

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  8. Hey, Tom, you certainly haven't worn out your welcome and you don't seem to be the sort of person who is in any danger of ever doing that. I fear that I'm more likely the sort of host whose portals you'll eventually tire of entering.

    Individuals write for all sorts of reasons, and probably no one writes for only one reason. Most of my posts since I started blogging back in the spring seen to have been motivated by a dog's desire to pee on a post, the post being George W. Bush. Me saying, "I've not been taken in by the man. And I'm here again to say so."

    I suspect that my avowed intention of using my blog henceforth mainly for "self-exploration" will be often contradicted. Mainly the criterion serves to free me from the self-imposed requirement to publish [something] daily. That was a silly requirement anyway, since it implies that one has readers who are waiting to read it.

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  9. Yes, if I took all my posts that nobody has attached a comment to and loaded them on the top floor of a WTC building before the terrorists struck, it still would have collapsed of the weight.

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