It’s the age-old question: why do we blog?
I started blogging because “they” said a writer should blog. It’s a way of reaching out to your readers, of getting your work and your name out there, of providing a more personal connection beyond your publications for people to relate to. Of course, when I started blogging, “publications” and “readers” were pretty much theoretical concepts for me. That’s changed a little bit anyway…
I keep blogging, though, because I like it. I like it a lot. I enjoy sharing funny or annoying bits from my day; I like keeping you all posted on my writing progress; I LOVE announcing sales (!); I like working out process thoughts or other questions and getting feedback from you guys. I mean–I’m a writer, and this is writing, and I just enjoy doing it. I love reading all your blogs too–the thoughtful, the personal, the funny, the cranky and ranty. I get most of my news from blogs…it’s a weird filter, just the things people on my LJ friends list choose to link to or talk about. But you know? It works.
Perhaps most importantly, though (at least these days), I find that blogging works very, very well when your life is moving along at a billion miles an hour and lots and lots of things are going on and changing very fast, and a lot of people want to know about it, and there’s a lot of detailed information involved. Like, oh, I don’t know, say when your boyfriend is facing surgery for metastatic colon cancer in a few weeks. Or when you’re leaving your job of many, many years, and going through a divorce. You know. Stuff like that.
Not all my friends read my blog. Not all my family reads my blog. (I know this is not unusual.) But…it kind of bothers me, you know? I put effort into this, and it’s personal information about my life, and it’s out there because I want people to know it. Especially people who care about me.
Of course there’s things I don’t post about–tons and tons of things. Of course more happened in my life yesterday than an oil change and an annoying thing at work. And I know people are busy and don’t have time to sit at a computer all day and catch up on everyone else’s ramblings. But…it seems like a good leg up, if you want to know what’s going on in someone’s life, if they keep a blog.
A woman I’ve known since college, and was very close to for a while in the years after graduation, but who has since moved off in a different direction, will call me on my cell phone every three or six or nine months and want to catch up. (Never mind that the cell phone is an awful way to get hold of me…the only worse way might be, oh, buying an ad during the Super Bowl or something.) I’ll eventually get the message and write her an email. She’ll call again. Anyway–sometimes we do manage to actually get together for lunch. And I have to tell her everything that’s gone on in my life since we last talked. And she’ll react with astonishment and disbelief and maybe even a tinge of judgment, because it’s all so surprising, because we haven’t been in touch in so long, and so much has happened! (Well, that’s especially true this year.) And I feel like, Well, you could be more available; or more interested; or (gee) read the blog.
But then she’ll vanish again into her own life, which is busy and fulfilling and interesting to her, and that’s all fine.
This is not a good friendship model for me. Friends I am close to now, I talk to them a LOT. On email, mostly, and chat; but I’m even learning how to use the telephone more these days. 🙂 (Land line, mind you.) But the important thing here is, some of these friends that I am close to now are people I’ve never actually met in person. (Stupid big planet.) But they are engaged. They don’t vanish for months and months, and then resurface and want it all told to them, as the amusing chronicles of What That Wacky Shannon Is Up To Now.
Am I being needlessly cranky here? Is it unreasonable to ask one’s friends and loved ones to read one’s blog? Notorious G doesn’t read my blog–she told me, “I feel like it’s an invasion of your privacy.” I’m all, Goofball, it’s the opposite of that. It’s public–that’s why it’s on the internet! The private stuff is what I’ll tell her when we talk. Why waste time catching her up on the public stuff? It can start to feel like I’m repeating myself.
I dunno. I can really see both sides here, though. Jay’s dad doesn’t read his blog; he says, “If you need me to know something, I trust you will tell me.” The witch-husband would read my blog, but it would really, really annoy him if he learned something there that I hadn’t told him first–no matter how minuscule. (Which, I get that; I didn’t know about Jay’s mask project till I read about it on the blog, and I got a little twinge of, Hey, we didn’t talk about this.)
But it’s part of who we are–especially regular, wordy bloggers like Jay and me. If you want to know us, don’t you want to know this part too?
Speaking of wordy. Sorry folks. I do go on. 🙂 But…I realized this morning that my dad probably doesn’t even know that Jay is having surgery on the 25th, unless my mom happened to run into him and tell him. That just strikes me as strange. And yes, the problem there is much larger and more complex than his not reading my blog…but that would be the subject for a different screed.