Blogging

Here's the deal about blogging: if you don't update regularly, then people will lose interest in your blog. If you feel like your audience has lost interest, then what's the point of blogging? Andy and I were having this discussion, and he wants to quit. "I don't see what the point is," he says. Well, I have been faithfully blogging since blogging was on xanga and livejournal. And never, EVER, have I had a faithful audience of readers. Does that stop me?! NO!

I blog for my own self-satisfaction. I have always been a writer, since before I could actually write, when I remember narrating my life in my head ("Rachel walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. She waited for her friend Tami to answer"). Part of the reason blogging is so appealing to me is the mere possibility that my voice might be heard. I keep personal journals, too, and copious notes on random scraps of paper, but unlike those media, a blog has the possibility of publicity. The moment I click "Publish Post," I allow myself a vulnerability that isn't included in my personal journal. This vulnerability causes me to write very differently than I would in my own personal notes--in voice, structure, content, vocabulary, and many other ways. Whether or not my work is actually read is secondary to the fact that it might be.

The challenge comes when one tries to make an exceptional blog about a seemingly unexceptional life. I am CERTAIN none of you care that my Vietnamese noodle salad tonight was a bust (failed nuoc chom), or that my car stalled out five times on the way home from work today, or that my residents were happy to see me today--the first day after my vacation--or any of the other mundane details of my life. That challenge, of trying to make interesting what is inherently uninteresting, is what makes it exciting. If I can draw your attention as a reader while talking about something that in and of itself doesn't merit your attention, I feel accomplished.

Most blogs are just people who are writing about their "boring," daily lives. The events are not at all compelling, but the thoughts and feelings behind them are. So to resign, saying "I just don't have anything to say," is only to say that (a) you don't want to share what's going on inside of you, or (b) there isn't anything going on inside of you.

In conclusion, Andy is wrong. Blogging is AWESOME.