Blogs and such.

My friend Dr. Mick, in his own questioning of the whole blogging phenomenon, has brought up a whole big discussion on blogs. What to write? Who will read it? Does anyone really care what you write? Will your parents or co-workers find it, and what will they think? So I thought I'd blog about it... :)

This journal (I really don't like the word "blog" for some reason) was spawned from the fact that I've always wanted to keep a journal. Only I can't handwrite for shit, and I never got a good system set up to keep a good journal on a computer. Anything more than writing a series of text files seemed like a lot of work. Blogging sites had all this functionality all built in, and seemed like the way to go.

The primary reason for this blog is to provide me a space to keep a basic journal of my day-to-day goings on, and an outlet to tell a funny story or save a memory. While I'm very aware that others read this, I also don't care a whole lot if they do or don't. I could password protect my blog tomorrow, and I think I'd still write the same sort of stuff. The point is, it's for me. I just leave it unlocked on the off chance that anyone out there wants to read. And apparently some people do. And some (noteably Nuthin' Doin' Iwan) don't, and that's fine too.

But as Norm has kind of touched on, I wouldn't consider this a true journal in the traditional sense if I can't write down all my most secret hopes and desires and rants. As I said, I remain acutely aware that others can read it. I try not to gripe about stuff that might hurt feelings. I don't write stuff that I don't want my parents to know about (like my online poker experience! Ha!). I try not to complain about friends, co-workers, former girlfriends, whatever, simply because I'm always aware in the back of my mind that they could very easily read it. And a coworker once did find this, and I was really glad that I hadn't bashed anyone from work.

So there's a tradeoff between having a private place to hide my secrets, and a public forum to share a bit of my life. And for whatever reason, I've chosen the latter. Probably mostly due to the fact that I don't have a whole lot of stuff to hide, and when I do need to gripe about something, Diana's a good sounding board. But that's pretty rare.

So, while I just wrote a paragraph up there saying I don't care if people read it, that's not exactly 100% accurate. It's a nice side effect that people are able to read it. I know my parents like to read about what I've been up to. And occasionally people might even be a little entertained.

As Diana blossoms into a real live teacher, a whole new crop of people might find this blog by searching for her name. This might require some changes on my part, as she might not want students to know what she did over the weekend or whatever. We'll see what develops in that front.

I have no idea, though, if this journal is representitive of blogs. Lots of people use theirs as their own little personally political sounding board. Or to brag about themselves. Or to get into a big network of blogs and meet people. Or to tell secrets (I recently read a blog by a girl name Laura, who was a "cutter", and talked about cutting herself to relieve emotional pain... intense stuff).

So, I just wanted to offer my own opinion about what this journal is about, for what it's worth. And I'm tired of typing now.

Lunchtime.