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One Must Always Ask Why

I chatted briefly with an old buddy from high school today on AIM. She surprised me by telling me she thinks I am a “neat person” and that she still reads this area of my site. That’s very high praise from her, actually. It’s not like hearing that you’re cool from a family member or someone that loves you; strangers, acquaintances, friends, and enemies actually critique you, often in quite different ways than even the most nitpicking family members do. There’s a certain amount of distance in those four types of relationships that makes judgements both more and less valid (using I don’t know who’s standard of a valid judgement…). People that live with you see the fact that you like to keep a small portable file cabinet with things that need to be done sorted into folders of importance–labeled in French–but a coworker or classmate sees you as the fairly quiet (around those that aren’t your friends), but still opinionated chick that slid through IB and AP with summa cum laude status. That generally classifies me as odd in anyone’s book.

Anyway, the train of thought I was heading towards was that my buddy’s statement that she admired that I was proud of my opinions got me thinking about Karsh’s question, Do You Have A Reason? Namely, to blog. I started this blog after reading the online journals of an old buddy and some of his friends. I figured I would just write about my day at work and school. Nobody read it, nobody cared, so what did it matter, right? Like the tree in the deserted forest type of thing, I guess. But that was then. The slightly increased popularity of my site doesn’t really matter much to me–it’s still in the fingers and toes stage, and it’s not like I get a cookie for having a certain amount of visits a day.

But why do I write? Karsh summed it up pretty damned well, in part:

Blogging is different. You write and you write and wonder if someone feels the same way you do.

So many times my family, my friends, my acquaintances, my enemies, strangers in chat rooms, the media, everyone it sometimes seems, likes to tell me I’m odd, that I’m smart, that I’m intelligent, that I’m a geek/dork/nerd, that I need to learn this or that (like manners, or “how to act”, or “how to be black”), that I need to grow up, that I need to be a child for once, etc., etc. that I’ve learned not to challenge their statements to their face, as it only confirms their correctness and alienates me further. But if you are one of those with the undervalued skill of a mind prone to criticism, you need a forum to air out your thoughts. And although feedback is nice, even that’s not necessary. So when Karsh asks, “Is it all heartfelt, or are they just blogging to post something and see themselves in type?” the answer is yes, in a way. See the best possible representation you can render of your thoughts in type; have the ability to step away and think something else for a while without the fear that you will lose the train of thought. Then come back later and let your associative memory take you down new paths.

But why an Internet format, rather than a paper journal? Although I do love paper journals, and I like to have them (although I don’t currently), I never have any luck whatsoever in keeping a journal going. The spontaneity of doing an online journal fits me well. If I’m not reading or out somewhere, I’m on my computer, so it’s always there, and if I’m at my computer, I’m as isolated as I can be, so I can focus my thoughts.

There’s also, of course, my interest in web design and ASP (etc., etc.), which sort of puts me in a feedback loop. I find an ASP application that allows me to write a blog fairly easy. So I’m writing. Then I modify the application slightly to allow me to do something odd (like ping to http://blo.gs before it became built-in to BlogWorks) and I’m coding a little bit and I have something else to write about, which may cause me to want to change something else to further customize, etc. And of course, there is the fun of CSS tinkering and trying to come up with a style that accomodates my more static pages, my blogs, and the two or three little apps I wrote (like the book review manager and the Mandrake 9 Problem/Solution area).

Unlike Karsh, it seems, I don’t worry about people finding out about this site at all. I assume “everyone” already knows about it, and work from there. So if my buddies bust out with a question about something I wrote, it’s not a big deal. I’m not writing about private stuff here. If my parents were to confess that they had been reading it from day one, I wouldn’t see a problem there either, nor would I be surprised.

I like how there’s no simple answer to the question of why I or anyone else blogs.