This thought hit me last night.
I am intrigued by my growing need for blogging every now and then… its like a form of confessional behavior that I never imagined I would subscribe to.
Why I call it confessional is cause of the way I treat this space... no big secrets being let out, - no. By confessional I mean that I treat this space as a mood and meaning tracker. Unlike a personal diary this space gives me the feeling of something ‘bigger’, and a feeling of a degree of anonymity. Probably most of the people that read this blog are people that do know me, but every once in a while there comes the unknown reader.
This got me thinking about this whole need for ‘confession’ and something ‘bigger’… it sounded too much like the way people feel about god. Its probably an outrageous parallel… I know.
But I sat and thought about this for a while. Confession is a crazy strand of communication. Its with ‘nobody’, and with no expectation for a reply. I don’t blog to create an open source solution finding attempt at my life’s problems… many of my blogs end with questions, but I don’t expect answers.
So what is it about externalizing thoughts that is an end in itself?
5 comments:
ASk Vernon...
Another thought...
We're past the times when you went to talk to your next door neighbors, or had all your good friends living close by.
The confessional blog is a creature of an age when we are more closely in touch with people on the other side of the planet, on Facebook, on email, Skype, the works. We may never even have to connect to our immediate environment.
And the vast sweep of territory we can reach out to comes with a certain comfort in addressing strangers, as they fall in the ambit of our natural audience of fellow travellers.
It's also possible that the folks next door AREN'T inclined to wonder about the mind-bending things that are on your mindscreen. You DO need to appeal to a larger catchment area, which would have to include people you don't know YET.
A bit of a close cousin to fiction writing, where we conjure in our minds an audience that is 'like us', and proceed to tell them the sort of things we are certain they are thinking about too. Or ready to think about... If they exist!
everybody needs a space to be themselves, don't they? I treat my blog as a kind of touchstone for my emotions and strands of thought and fantasy, and it's comforting to see the confused threads in well-formed words, in a structure that people find well-written.Things I can't articulate as my speaking skills are nil.
A confession, an outburst, a suggestion, idea or story; its nice to know that strangers find what you have to say intriguing and even if people I already know read it, they're strangers in a sense, because what I write in my blog would be strange (I mean new) to them!
(these comment things should have word limits for people like me!)
hmmm...ahhh....mmm...from what i think, even if i do read a blog (of someone familiar), i'm intreagued by what's written there, it comes with with a certain sense of honesty, i guess for yourself and the reader feels it too. in that sense confessional. this is my first time on your, i like what i read. nea
F#%K the spell check.....ahh. this will never let me be spontaneous :)
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