I’ve been blogging off and on for almost three years, and it feels like I’ve just begun. I’m not a life-long writer or diarist, so I’ve started from scratch with blogging — seeing new reflections of myself in what I write and what I don’t write, seeing the familiar in my irregular rhythms, in the tension between my extraverted tendencies and my introverted nature, being both delighted with and unsure of the public/private landscape.

I’ve never been a small-talker and I’m still unlearning a habit of thinking long and carefully before committing energy to words. I have a long way to go. Writing a blog post or making a comment like this one takes a lot of time and soul-searching, but it also offers the most satisfying communication — the sharing of the life of the mind. Why do I do this? Is it to know that I am not alone?

While I’ve been grappling with blogging and major life events, I’ve left commenting virtually alone. To truly engage takes time and energy, a willingness to risk, and for me enough experience of the blogosphere and myself in it to find a way to filter through (and filter out) the infinite, instant stimuli that so easily overwhelm.

And then I look up, see the sun rise or set, realize how long I’ve been sitting in this chair with my fibromyalgic body screaming: Move! And I wonder again why I do this….

Dave, I’m not sure how a lack of comments would affect my blogging. I suspect I’d keep doing it, but I know I’m influenced by comments. There’s an interaction, a response in me to the feedback. What I write might change.

I’ve sometimes wondered if blogging will turn out to be a fad, here for a while, then gone. I’m sure it will go through some ups and downs, and evolve. People will try it for a while and quit. But others will keep doing it. I know of mailing lists and forums that have been around for years. They change over time. Blogging will surely change too. The available software—even what’s free—is pretty amazing. I doubt it will go to waste. As long as we can get electricity and a connection (which could get dicey as the world runs low on oil), I think some of us will continue blogging.

I meant “condescending” but I have dyslexic fingers….

I originally started an online journal because I had all these thoughts running around in my head and it was a way of clearing out the detritus. But then it evolved into more thoughtful communication with a community of friends. I write and often re-write before I post my entry for the day. I’m not just clearing out junk; I have things I want to say and you are people I want to say it to.

Have you written posts or comments you regretted?

No, not really. Anything more insightful or intimate that comments on the weather are written in Word and reviewed for content and error before being posted. A couple that I have written about my mother never saw the light of day.

Does blogging accomplish a purpose for you? If so, what? It gives me the opportunity to communicate, to share ideas and life events with compatible intelligent people. I work in a blue-collar industry and not many people are logophiles; my husband, on the other hand, has two advanced degrees and his “conversations” with me are always condescenting and professorial, as if I were in need of instruction and the benefit of his paterfamilias wisdom. I look to you for exchange of ideas, a few humorous comments, insight on today’s world and verbal companionship.

Michael, it’s those things I write when I’m angry (or passionate, as with politics) that really come back to haunt me. I guess people have to take the bad with the good, but when it’s my first and possibly only comment on someone’s blog, or when my emotion comes from my life, not precisely the topic at hand, it disturbs me. I try not to be unkind, though I worry about people taking what I say in a way I didn’t intend. My words come out harsh at times.

Violetismycolor, yes, the personal information requires careful thought. I like to protect others from public display that would embarrass them. I debated, and even consulted a few family members, about one of my recent posts.

Old Soldier, thanks for stopping by. Do you still have a blog? I didn’t see a link for one on your website.

Cas, I think that’s great to have so many bloggers in the family. I agree with being careful about what to share. I use my real name, so to me that’s almost enough personal information, and I only provide that because of my fiction. (I debate with myself sometimes about writing under a penname.) Yes, reading other blogs is such a draw it takes up most of my blogging time. I have trouble keeping the number of places I visit under control.

For the Trees, that’s great feedback. I understand the “almost mute” bit, too. If I had a nickel for every time someone’s told me I’m “too quiet.” I detest that. How quiet is too quiet anyway? I like to think I’m a good listener (although I’m sometimes not). And you’re right, life is too fast paced these days.

Susan, thanks, and I do think that with practice and patience, not being so impulsive, we can all learn to share our opinions more creatively and perhaps less harshly.

Bruce, excellent thoughts. I do look at this as a way of finding community. In too many places today people hide behind gated communities or treat strangers on the street as if they were criminals.

Eric, the originating publicity aspect of my blog has turned out to be more of an excuse than otherwise. Yeah, those blogging droughts are curious, a little like writer’s block, with some differences. I still want to write, during those times, just not material for my blog.

I am an introvert, so blogging, for me, is more an excuse to write than to socialize. My blog is not really very personal. I enjoy reading personal stuff but I’m not comfortable putting that sort of thing out in public. Very often I wonder, why should anyone care about what I’m saying? Probably I can answer what the value of my own blogging is by reflecting on the fact I like to read blogs by others like yourself.

I don’t take a lot of time polishing my blogs. But to compensate I make them short, so that I can still give some adequate consideration to what I say. I don’t want to labor over them, but I don’t want to embarrass myself in public either.

The “publicity” aspect of my blog is mostly an excuse. My real motivation is pretty peculiar. For years, back in the seventies and early eigties, I was involved in sf fandom, publishing, reading and trading and writing letters to fanzines. Most of the zines weren’t about sf, but more about the zines’ editors. It was a kind of very slow internet via paper and post. It involved exactly the sort of personal writing you see on blogs today. So, for me, the idea that I’d have an excuse to engage in that sort of relaxed writingbut without having to pay postage or pay for dulicating let alone print on a hectograph or a mimeographor or spirit duplicator — well I couldn’t resist. So my blogs are just like what I used to write in my old fanzine, but, I hope, better written.

And yeah, we write about ourselves. But I don’t think it’s egotism. We just take ourselves as the most accessible subject to satisfy our need to write something.

What’s the difference between a private and public journal… and what do we get out of sharing our thoughts in a public forum like this?

Can it be that blogging is a way to mark our presence in the universe, an I-Am-Here kind of announcement, a plea not to be ignored?

Or perhaps a way to forge a community, to step out of one’s loneliness… and share deep (and not so deep) feelings?

Blogging is like thinking out-loud … and there’s an excitement in the process of thinking out-loud and inviting responses, isn’t there?

It’s almost as if blogging helps satisfy our desire for intimacy and relationships… in ways that may elude us in today’s fast-paced, impersonal world.

Ironically, we’re using the same technology that fosters isolation and speed… to slow ourselves down, to say Listen to what I think… and ask, in response, what do you think?

So, blogging, in this sense, is a way of forming friendships… although perhaps that’s taking it too far.

It is a way of knowing other people (strangers, really) from the inside out. We don’t really care about appearances, do we? Just a person’s spirit and heart and his or her ability to communicate thoughts and feelings in words.

Blogging, ultimately, is an act of hope, I think, a way of reaching out and hoping for a response.

It requires an act of faith, too–just as all writing does–that the words will come (whether or not they spark a response from a reader).

In the end, blogging helps us come to know ourselves better… what we think, what we feel.

And when blogging works, it helps us make connections that enable us to better understand other people, too

So when I, an almost-mute around live people, get on a keyboard, it’s Katie-bar-the-door. I have these bipolar mood swings that destroy any degree of self-control I might be able to muster, so I just spew, a lot of the time. I write much the same way, just spew it out and then go through the editing process at length. Or not, sometimes I just let stand what I’ve spewed. Now THAT’S not good. But then again, I have a habit of just spewing on other’s blogs comments sections. So far most of it’s been pretty funny, according to feedback, but it’s all fiction. All of it. I just make it up as I go along.

The above comment, that our pace of life has gotten so fast, I echo. With the advent of .25-second cuts in TV commercials, jittery hand-held cameras in programs and the “instant” speed of life in the media, we find ourselves trying to keep pace with kids whose synapses and response times are microscopic. There’s nothing like the measured pace of those over 50. I’ve slowed down so much in the last four years I don’t know myself any more. But that’s good, I get to find out who I am again.

So a huge dichotomy exists and gets wider all the time. The music, the media, are being forced to push everything faster, faster, faster, to keep the hyperactive minds of the young engaged, while we Baby Boomers are slowing down and want more time to think about things, comprehend. I don’t know which will win out. Something, somewhere has to give.

Okay, so much for the speed-of-light rant. Let’s talk about the problem with blogging: telling the world too much. I don’t know what to think except to preface everything with the famous disclaimer, “EVERYTHING you see here is a lie, a big, fat, blown-all-out-of-proportion lie. I made it all up.” After all, if what’s his name can write a memoir that’s fabricated, why not write a couple of memoirs that are total fabrication? It’s down to reading for entertainment or learning, and there’s not a lot of time LEFT for reading. After all, the iPod’s calling. Not to mention email, the blog, the on-line photo blog, etc etc etc and my cell phone’s ringing again. Dang, while I was talking I got three more text messages!

My writing is becoming even more entertaining, I hope, because I can’t write non-fiction. Oh, yes, dig up facts to support the action so someone who KNOWS the area won’t think I’m a total flake, but those facts come off the internet and can be as wacky as a Wikipedia entry. I just can’t track a lot of details well enough to write true thought-provoking non-fiction, I get scattered in the middle of it. So I suppose that makes me a write-off as far as saying anything pithy or true.

I don’t know, Barbara, I just don’t know any more. I think I tend to say whatever comes off the top of my head because it’s such a hassle to sit and debate it with myself. And in truth, if pressed I’d have to write down what I wanted to say, if I knew it was gonna be held against me. That’s why I can’t ever testify in court.

Enough. Hope I’ve given you some good feedback on your question.