I was looking back on my earliest posts and came across this one. I like it. Not many people looked at my blog back then. (I had 245 page views yesterday but I think only 4 or 5 read this 11/16/2009 one.) But those old ones aren't bad. Go back to 2009 if what I write now seems banal....
Monday, November 16, 2009
to blog or not to blog?
I have enough ego to think that maybe, just maybe, the answer to the first question is that what I write here is of some interest and, might I hope?, some value.
The second question is easier to answer: I hate what has become of communications in this space and time. Many of the worst mistakes very good communicators have made was when they decided to write emails instead of letters or phone calls or face to face conversation. I allowed myself to be put on face book, but don't try to be my 'friend' since I've looked at my page exactly once in the six months or so it has been there. And I don't give a fig about a tweet or a twitter.
Here is the serious point to all that--other than I'm too lazy to keep up with it all and have not a little hubris about being 'unconnected' while all the world is 'connected'--all this stuff challenges and confounds my profound belief in privacy.
I read on my face book page, the time I looked at it, several notes on my 'wall'--(writing on a wall is a terribly impersonal form of communication to me)--about what people I know and love and deeply respect were up to. One of my dear friends (I mean FRIENDS, not a Face book friend) let me know she was watching Lost on TV. Another let me know they were considering having a beer or two and going to bed. A third let me know what she was in the middle of having for dinner.
I simply don't want to be responsible for keeping anyone from a beer or two for even a moment, or delaying sleep to write on my wall. Plus, I have no interest really in what anyone is watching on TV and certainly don't care about my friends eating habits enough to want them to stop eating to let me know about what it is they are eating. Now, if that sounds harsh and 'disinterested', let me tell you this: "I just spell checked this document and spell check let me correct facebook as 'face book' and 'Face book' on the same spell check." I find that mildly interesting and momentarily ironic that something called "Spell Check" agrees with (I think it was George Washington) the person who said anyone who had to be consistent in spelling has little imagination. {Plus, I just spell checked again and changed 'consistant' to consistent.}
I honestly love 'spell check' since I tend to invert letters--like, I spelled "John" Jhon until I was in high school. But the stuff people write on my wall, just me thinking and writing, seem to be things they would be better served to keep to themselves. I'll have to spell check it, but most everything people wrote on my wall was 'banal' (Hey, I just spelled 'banal' correctly!) I should go on Face book/face book and post that for all my friends...."Jim just spelled 'banal' correctly without any help!"
My tongue is in my cheek, in case you wondered, but I do ponder why we are driven to share stuff that isn't terribly interesting on Face book/face book. And tweets are eons beyond my ken. Though people tell me (I don't know if it is true) that Face book doesn't put things in third person any more, writing something that requires a limited number of letters, words, syllables--whichever--seems to defeat the reality that we all have volumes to say. Twitter would be better served to ask people to communicate in haiku (not even going to spell check that). I'd like receiving haiku from 'friends'. Maybe we could start a service where we 'hike' haiku to each other in real time. I could get into that.
All this is to explain why I haven't been blogging. I simply like having secret thoughts and pondering experiences that no one need ever know I pondered. It seems to me one of the things that make people interesting is the 'mystery' of them--how we can never know what someone else is thinking no matter how much we wish we could. I began to think that if I blogged all the time, I would lose my mystery, my private thoughts, the stuff I want to keep inside and let no one else know about.
That's an interesting question: what are the thoughts you would never, ever, not for a moment, not to anyone reveal? Every time someone says to me, "a penny for your thoughts" I reply, "oh, they're worth a lot more than that--and you can't afford them!"
I know it's not 'true', like TRUE that the Internet will suck out all our thoughts eventually, but I do believe we're leaving the barn door open by never having private thoughts. Lots of stuff on the Internet, people tell me, is cruel, ugly and untrue. People tell me, since I don't look for it, that you can find sites where people say horrible things about our President, people in the media, public figures and even their friends. I hear that blogs and stuff cause a great deal of pain (not to mention law suits) among young folks. I don't know personally, but I've been told that young people send nude pictures of themselves to each other on their smart phones. My phone is definitely not 'smart'. In fact, it is stupid--or maybe its owner is. Maybe I could be sending text messages that would be even more thoughtless than some of my emails have been if I were more adroit at the little phone I carry with me. I'm sure my phone is at least smart enough to refuse to take a picture of me naked. I hope so, though I believe, if I knew how, I could take such a picture and send it out to the world. God help us....
Any way, having gone on and on about how I think the electronic revolution has created a guillotine (I did spell check that--boy was I wrong!) many of our heads are being shoved under, I do think I will blog again.
I will seek to avoid being banal (spelled it right again!) and I will be responsible about how much I violate my privacy. And I do hope--though the writing is what gives me joy--that someone might read what I write from time to time. I don't know why, but there are things I want to share and a blog (that by the way is as unfortunate a word as 'twitter'!) is one way to do that.
So, I'm back and I have some things to say....
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