Blogging on blogging

I have to admit, I feel a bit sheepish about this whole blogging thing. I guess it’s just the act of placing my thoughts and ideas in the public domain that seem kind of self-important - as if my observations are too profound not to be shared with the world. And the truth is, the world is doing just fine without my 2 cents. So, why not just keep a journal? Why a blog?

I actually wrote another blog when I was working in a West African refugee camp, and I found it a really useful way to keep friends and family current on my misadventures. And blogs are great for that. Especially with our modern families increasingly thrown to the four winds. My family is a perfect case. We’re in Boston, my folks are in Chicago, my sister in Colorado, my brother-in-law in Niagra NY, my father-in-law in South Africa. And my friends are equally scattered. So, blogging (like facebook and skype) is a nifty solution to the modern problem of yanking in a community from a continually geographically expanding group of friends and family.

In the more useful incarnations, blogging can also be a great way to share information on anything anyone wants to geek out about: vegan macrobiotic breakfast recipes, clam digging techniques on the eastern seaboard, or 18th century Austrian lamp collecting. One of the greatest wonders of humanity is the diversity of bizarre proclivities. And the modern world gives those so inclined enough room to indulge and become expert in their odd passions. And lucky for us they have an outlet for their years of accumulated knowledge. So, when I truly do want to find out how to cook a week’s worth of meals for under $30, a simple Google search will reveal the insights from someone in Brooklyn has done just such an experiment. Of course, some might argue that this surfeit of information can do as much harm as good, but I’ll leave that debate for another time.

But none of this is really what I’m doing here. I’m not giving much thought to what “the folks at home” might want to see. And I can’t say that there is a singular passion I want to expound upon in this forum. I’m actually going old school and writing a journal. So, back to my original question: Why a blog?

Everyone who I told I was planning to undertake this writing exercise said the same thing: “You should turn it into a blog.” Isn’t that strange? It’s like if you’re going to take the effort to produce something, you can’t just keep it to your self. No one does that. We all put our pictures of flikr and our videos on youtube and our well wishes on facebook for all the world to see. If it’s not shared, it doesn’t exist anymore. I have my doubts as to whether that's a good thing.

So, I think I’m ambivalent about this whole thing, but succumbing to peer pressure.

I’m sure I’ll write differently knowing that there’s a potential audience. I’ll make things more digestible and organized. This post is half as long as it would have been if it was for my eyes only, so you’re spared my rambling digressions on the pitfalls of the overabundance of information and whether blogging is a safety valve for paranoid nutjobs or an outsized platform for their hate. I definitely work harder on my entries than if they were for my eyes only, but I wonder if I’m less honest.

Who knows how long this experiment will last. I guess I’m enjoying it at least because I can decorate the site with ironic pictures and play with the format and fonts. I guess I’ll keep doing this until I run out of things to ponder or the motivation to tell “you” about it.