Why I Blog: A Friend Wonders

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A friend writes:

You're a good blogger. I can't get past the mental barrier that one is writing in a black hole, and the singularity is ego, a dark force in the world, sometimes I think the darkest. But maybe that's the force behind all writing. I don't know. An opinion? What do you like best about blogging?


And I reply:

Well, thanks. My blogging falls into two chunks – the first couple years when I thought it would somehow turn into something, that it would become a way into other writing opportunities. (I wasn’t exactly sure how. I imagined something I wrote would go viral, and the rest would unfold with iron inevitability.) After I realized that wouldn’t happen, I thought the blogging would wither away. But I found I still liked to do it because it was a creative release – and I don’t have one, or maybe I should say I am too lazy to work at *really* writing something and getting it published.

For real. For money.

Because I keep track of the number of my daily visitors and how they are referred to my blog, I have a keen sense of how my readership has dropped. Five years ago when I was writing long and posting frequently, I was able to drive my daily visits up to 100. But since then, I have seen the daily hit rate steadily drop to about 20, the majority of whom are accidents, not regular visitors. This is oddly liberating. The fact I am throwing my words out into the void seems brave/ironic/self-consciously futile. No one is reading me *but I soldier on anyway*.

If I described my justifications tomorrow, I would probably describe them very differently. My rationale is variable. But the truth is that I get some kind of sensation out of writing to no one – maybe it’s a kind of “lottery ticket” thing: Knowing you won’t win doesn’t mean you can’t win if you know what I mean, though I should probably say if you *feel* what I mean.

It’s odd. My blog is a kind of commonplace book that helps me keep track of the march of time. (Now that I’ve plugged Twitter into the blog, it’s even more so.) It’s also a personal journal that justifies the effort of typing, not writing by hand, by the fact what is so neatly typed is published – sort of. In fact, one of the pleasures of my blog is all the little “self-publishing” flourishes, all the links and pictures and debris I can throw against the wall.

Somehow it shows I haven’t given up. Well, actually I have. But this is my “apron of leaves.” If I were to blog this, I could link to the quote and maybe to a picture.

I think I *will* blog this. (Maybe the multi-purposing is part of the draw.)

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Just Feeling Very Quiet, Very Peaceful

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Quite a lot has gone on this week, events and explorations of one kind or another, but every time I've sat down to write, I've concluded:

Oh that's nobody's business. Interesting. From whence comes this sudden desire for privacy? Blogger ego tells blogger that what blogger thinks is everybody's business, or should be, since blogger's life is illustrative, microcosmic, fascinating in its particularity and its generality, for are there not lessons in both varieties of experience?

But there's obviously plenty of ego in the sudden notion I should not be sharing since it assumes someone is paying attention!! (Two exclamation points. How many things deserve two exclamation points? The U.S. Constitution? The Ten Commandments?)

I graded my ethics midterm. That's between me and the students. I took reporting class to San Francisco City Hall. The things I could tell you about Supervisor Eric Mar (but won't). Pat and I took our weekly bike ride. (The proverbial fly on the wall would have been left far behind.)

I'm suddenly hoarding my trivia. I don't deserve the name of blogger.

Michael Jackson: Vied with Sean Connery for the Title of Most Macho Heterosexual

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You see, as I noted so long ago and so long never wrote about in scholarly journals (as if!), one of the most useful tools of the columnist (and what is the average blogger but a columnist, marginally informed but totally involved) is contrarianism, which stance cuts through the haze of uniformity.

As Kevin Drum noted in a post today about the receding number of links in the posts of many bloggers:

I write as much as I ever have, but in my posts I link more to news sources and less to other bloggers than I used to. I'm not sure why. Part of it might be related to another evolution I've noticed: the political blogosphere increasingly seems to latch on to four or five outrages of the day that suck up most of its attention. It seems like every blog I read posts about the same few political nano-scandals every day, and since I mostly find this stuff kind of boring I don't link to it very much.

Same take on the same subject: One size fits all, and where's the fun in that? So there's a tip. But how to make that contrarian position thoughtful and useful even when insincere? (A headline, more's the pity, doesn't make a post.)

I believe our 50 minutes is up.