I've never been one to keep a journal or diary. I'm not a "gushy feely" kind of person, and I rather pride myself on being self-unaware (a joke between my husband and myself). So to put my feelings on paper would feel a bit like a betrayal of self. But I have to admit, there is something very appealing about unleashing these bits of myself into cyberspace.
I have three academic blogs and one rather anonymous blog I keep for personal writing. Now, admittedly, I don't fill my personal blog with mush and gush. Rather, I use it to vent (about how wicked mean my aunts are to my mother) and to amuse myself and whoever else happens to find it. Having spent the last twenty years of my life writing academic papers, I have found it cathartic to be able to write about more shallow, less consequential things (such as how I think filesharing has transfered power from record executives to artists-where it should be--or how much I love the fact that it takes two hours longer to cook a Thanksgiving turkey in my house because my dad can't stop himself from opening the oven on the hour to inhale the heady aroma of roasting bird).
But perhaps more than anything, I am drawn to the potential audience of blogs--anonymous, bored, self-possessed surfers of the web. I often wonder about the search or series of clicks they followed to encounter my blog. Did I pop up under search results for Thanksgiving turkeys? Or has someone in a webring devoted to filesharing linked to an entry? The more I ponder these issues, the more I want to write, to reach out to those faceless readers who, sometimes, I've been able to connect with enough to compel them to comment on a post. And that, my readers, is a rather empowering thing, don't you think?
12 years ago