Friday, August 11, 2006

be honest

when you blog, do you have a specific audience in mind? sometimes i think about the kinds of people who seem to read my blog (or rather, the people that post comments. those are the only readers that you learn anything about!) when i'm writing something up, sometimes i'll think of a specific person when i write about a particular topic, sometimes i think about how people might react at a lack of posting, or i'll swear less because i think someone might not like it so much. i leave stuff out because i'm not comfortable sharing with everyone, and i feel guilty sometimes about that. which is dumb, because damn this is a blog and not anything terribly important. even the word "blog" makes it impossible to take too seriously. i just wonder what sorts of things you might think about when you blog, if you think long and hard before posting (like i sometimes do) or if you just let your fingers do their thing and deal with the effects later (which is another way i work). i'm more curious than anything else. i've been thinking about this for a while, and just wanted to know what you thought.

i mean, in the grand scheme of things it's not like my blog is of worldwide importance, at the same time, it is very important to me. this last year was difficult in a lot of ways, but i always had a place where i could say/write what i was thinking, and that's been enormously good for me. plus, i've been blogging for what? three years now? that's a long time. i started it in my basement apartment with a free trial of typepad, messing with settings until super late at night on my crappy old laptop, buying domain names later, and even learning a little coding along the way. it's a part of my life that i have a hard time explaining to anyone who doesn't get it, like why i feel the need to post entries about movies and nervous breakdowns and books and my lists. then when i think i've thought about it enough, i like to ask you why you do it.

plus, the mustache totally won. i'm going to go shopping for one now! and do a little drawing just to be on the safe side, because really, it was a close race.

3 comments:

wixlet said...

I'm much more careful about what I write on my own site. If I weren't a professional web person, I would care less and be more myself, but when your whole livelihood depends upon teh interweb, and your potential supervisors are at least as savvy as you about finding hidden dirt on potential employees...well, it is just better to be safe.

I love commenting and discussing in others' spaces, though, because I feel less constrained by practicality/paranoia, and so while I may seem boring at LH, I am probably slightly less boring both in real life and in my comments.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I generally have a specific audience in mind. But not always the same audience. Sometimes the audience is the 2 or 3 precious people who read my blog, sometimes it's my family, sometimes my friends. However, sometimes it's just the need to get my point of view out there. Other times to get something written down so I won't forget it - like recipes. I do try to leave my whining for my private journal and show my more mature side to the blogosphere.

Like Wixlet, I am careful that if my collegues or bosses were to stumble across my blog I wouldn't find my self in a heap of trouble. When I did have a blog purely about work I was careful to have it be completely separate from my personal one and all the names were changed to protect the guilty.

Josh Krauter said...

When I "blog," (a word I still can't say or write without cringing, we need a better word for these things), I mostly try to please myself, though I am always aware of the handful of people who read it regularly. Sometimes I post when I'm drunk, and I'm usually embarrassed by those but I leave them up anyway. I am particularly guilty of making very serious pronouncements on Moviebot when I get drunk that embarrass me a little. I also use much more profanity on my blog than I do in my daily life, not sure why. I'm nervous that some day my grandmother will find it. She's a great lady with a very high opinion of me (undeserved) and a very low opinion of profanity, so if she ever read it, she would probably cry. I hope this never happens.