May 31, 2005
Should I Even Be Doing This?
My brother and his great company 803 productions have set up this blog space for me. I will certainly use it for the classes I will teach, but should I use it for "normal" blogging?
I have kept a journal since high school -- not religiously, but whenever something struck me as notable. I'd record my thoughts, feelings, and observations, plus things I would want to remember. New books I'd heard of, new music I'd want to listen to, as well as gaming ideas, writing ideas, and even dissertation ideas would go into whatever notebook I was keeping at the time. It is important to me to keep some sort of record. I don't want to forget the new books or music I have heard of. Keeping track of disseratation or other research ideas has kept me going (and saved me, occasionally) on the professional front. Nor do I want to forget who I was at the various points of my life. Some of those high school entries in my little red spiral bound notebook are embarrassing to me now, but they were important to me enough then to write down. It's important, I think, to remember the selves we were in our past; it keeps us grounded, it shows us that we are not finished, that we grow and change as life moves on. It also illuminates threads of constantcy in our lives. There are things that were important to me when I was sixteen that are important to me now. These threads may be the themes of our own stories, and it's important to keep track of them as we write that story with the day-to-day choices of our lives.
So, keeping a journal, a record, is important to me. But does it need to be a blog? Why should I make it public, to put it out there for people to see? It was the rare excerpt from any of my old journals that anyone else saw. Now, I am under no illusion that my blog would attract great interest from the world-at-large. But why use this potentially public format when I am content with my moleskin notebooks and cheap pens? I will likely self-censor much more than I do in the notebooks (although, the older I get the more I self-censor anyway. Self-censor isn't exactly right. It's more accurate to say I write less in the heat of the moment). What do I gain from putting the developing-Nakia out there for the world to see?
One thing I do gain is pontential connection (or re-connection) with some other, intersting folks. While I have never been keen on sharing my journal entires with others, it's not like I didn't talk about the things that ended up in those journals with other people. There were conversations aplenty, with my friends, family, teachers, and occasionally random strangers, about all sorts of things that are now part of my story. As I get older, it seems those conversations happen less and less with anyone other than my wife. I live far away from people I was once close to. My friends all have busy lives. Sarah is the touchstone of my life now, and rightly so. And even though I talk to her about anything and everything, (re)establishing meaningful relationships with others seems a worthwhile task, one essential to continued growth. I just don't want to get stale. Inanition is the enemy.
Can a blog help to prevent inanition? Can a blog lead to connections, growth, and new and interesting stoires? I have no idea, but experimenting seems worthwhile.
Posted by Nakia at 12:39 PM | Comments (2)