Ego and teddy bears
Dear diary,
Why are all of the girls at school soooo cute, and why don't they know that I exist? Maybe I should begin an on-line diary, so that everyone from Manhattan to Timbuktu can know about me?
What's that Daddy Woo-Woo? You don't think that's a good idea?
I would agree, my fuzzy bear friend, but I'm not a 12 year-old girl anymore. I have needs, and no better outlet than this.
"Squeek?" Well, true. I've never been a 12 year-old girl. Granted.
"Squeek-squeek?" I love you too, my oldest confidant. But hush, I have something to say.
I logged onto Blogger with the intention of sharing another few thoughts. Then it occured to me that I'm plum out of'm. I don't want to keep my audience of millions... well, let's be honest here, I am talking to Daddy Woo-Woo. We'll guess at 5. Anyhow, didn't want to keep my small audience waiting. I haven't posted since Saturday night (sunday, Mother's Day!, morning). I'm sure that I could have come up with something about Shatner, or airline peanuts, or Gore inventing the internet. But I have drawn a complete blank.
Well, not complete. It occurs to me that blogging is perhaps the most self indulgent, narcissistic enterprise possible. A few links here, a few comments there, and I expect people to think that I have anything new or interesting to say? What would make someone like myself, a generally normal guy with a 9-5 job, (almost) 2 kids, and a computer think that I could be someone in a realm that I know so little about?
What makes people blog? There's the politicol blogs. That I understand, although I wonder if late at night M Drudge is asking himself "how did this snowball so big? Who am I to go there?" Actually, I don't think that Drudge has this problem. Then there are the lifestyle, cultural, "embedded", music, love, sex... well, we'll just say a lot of them. But what about the average joe's personal weblog? What emotion or need causes us to put forth our personal feelings, hates, wants, loves, etc.?
I've posted before that I'm a solipsist. Woo-Woo, this is a lie. I'm sorry that I've sold myself at the alter of ego, but this is a lie. Otherwise, I wouldn't care what I wrote. Many people don't. I wouldn't care what people think. But I do. I wouldn't care that this post has become far, far, too long. But I care.
Does the desire to blog exhibit some failure of regular human contact? Some need for aplause in the only medium that we may have some talent for?
Daddy Woo-Woo, I must put you to bed for tonight. You have a lot to think about, and, to be honest, I don't understand your squeeks like I did as a child.
Give my best to the Care-Bears.
posted by KOM @ 11:40:00 PM
14 Comments
14 Comments:
I thunk I missed something....
You're not on nyquil too, are you?
For me, blogging is very cathartic. And sadly, right now it encompasses my entire social life. But for years, it was suggested that I write in a journal for the sake of sanity. Yet the journal never did the trick. The thoughts were still trapped in my head. This allows me to get them heard in a forum that is not quite as personal as telling my closest peeps. I mean, no offense, but if one of you decide that I'm just too wacked for words and never visit my blog again it wouldn't destroy me like it would if my best friends turned away. (They probably wouldn't but sometimes old insecurities die slow deaths)
Why do I Blog?
Because it's there!
No wait, that's why I climbed Everest.
NO, I never did climb Everest I just stayed at base camp and ate all the Vienna sausages.
Those guys were PISSED when they got back!
They're all "DUDE! What with eating all the sausages?!" And I'm like "Duuuuuude! I was hungry and I didn't thnk you guys were coming back! 'sides I figured you'd have eaten one of the guides by now!"
and they're like "DUDE! We...
Wait what was your question again?
Ahh yes, Why do I Blog?
My best friend no longer lives in state, so my Blog is a surrogate "Joel".
Also, YEARS ago when I suffered from Depression I was told the "Keep a journal" thing too. Something about venting without snapping and going up in a clock tower?
I was like wait KOM is a woman?? Ahhh Ok he has never been a 12 year old girl. Ok back to speed.
Good post. I started blogging because I am gone from home a lot and thought it would be a good way to share things with my family when I was gone. I would post things about my day and what we were doing. You know just stuff for my family. I had no idea lots (2) other people were reading it. Got a comment one day that said "Talk about something interesting"
Changed my life man...Changed my life.
David's comment cracked me up.
So it's self-indulgent, so what?
This is going to sound stupid, but I don't care. I think people have a basic need to create. And maybe my blog is my creative outlet...it may be a piece of sh*t, but it's my little slice of dookie heaven.
I love reading everyone's blogs...so none of us are Hemingway. He committed suicide anyway... a lot of good his fancy-shmancy writing did for him. That was evil, I recant.
When I started blogging (back in 2000, when we had to do a lot of stuff manually, there were no templates, no comments, and had to walk a mile in 3 feet of snow with no shoes to get to the Blogger page) it was honestly my only outlet. I was in a city where I knew no one, I was broke as hell, and depressed. I had little human contact other than the old fogeys I worked with. My cat was great for snuggling up to, but not so big on the conversation. So I blogged.
When things got better (friends, boyfriend, money) I stopped. I didn't intend to, but I found I had less and less to blog about. No one really cared though, because no one was reading it anyway. (Save for one strange guy up in Michigan.)
More recently, I started finding more blogs that told stories. I decided to start blogging again to tell my stories. I didn't know if anyone would care or find them at all interesting, but I wanted to do it. Still do. And I've got a few left yet. :)
Self-indulgent? Well, yeah, probably. But then so is any time you're talking about yourself really. It's just that a blog can seem so one-sided that it tends to bring it out more.
I think egotistic and narcissistic are a bit harsh though. I think everyone has creative urges, and mine happen to be to write. What will I write about then? I've tried writing about music, didn't like it after a while (and I kind of sucked at it). I could write about something random, like the carpet industry, but I don't really know much about that.
So I write about myself. My life. Things I know.
I also love reading others' blogs. I dig getting different perspectives on things, hearing their stories, relating to them.
As usual, I've left you a book here. ;) Sorry.
All,
I would have thought that more people had wrestled with the self-importance issue. I'm glad that you're all comfortable! I must be slowly turning into Woody Allen, overanylizing everything about myself (actually, I may want to think about seeing a shrink for involving my teddy bear in this!)
It was just a passing thought, and perhaps narcissistic is too strong a word. I guess everyone does come to this table for different reasons. And whatever keeps you from the clocktower - that I'm for.
I started my blog because I wasn't working full time and I was bored as hell. Then, I thought it's good to put stuff in a tangible form and maybe I'll discover something about myself. So far, I've discovered that I'm an idiot. I knew that already, so the blog has only made my self-idiocy realization worse.
Geez, now I'm depressed....
;)
Actually, D&BQ, I was arguing the exact opposite.
It seems to me that the act of blogging comes from an already over-inflated ego (and I would agree here, that generall it is a liability). Otherwise, why would we (bloggers) assume that anyone cares what we think?
As most of the comments above show, people blog for various reasons. A lot of people were simply throwing their thoughts down and found themselves being read!
Of course, I was polite, but I don't believe them. One doesn't publish (key word, there) to the World. Wide. Web. and assume that no one will be peeking.
I just wondered about the act of focusing the glass on oneself, and this is also why I chose the word narcissistic. If one spends too much time looking in the mirror...
Reese - the unexamined life, and all that ;)
Not true!
I DIDN'T know that anyone other than the people I gave my Blog address to could or would read it.
Hell, I didn't notice the "Next Blog" until I was a week or so into posting.
I thought just Joel and a couple of people would read it every once in a while. Now I have all these cool folks from all over the globe reading. It's turned out to be cooler than I thought it would be.
Of course everyone I've met so far seems to have written a "I don;t think I'll do this much longer" post, so I'll be all alone again. :(
(Singing loudly and poorly)
ALL BY MYSEEEEEEELF
DON'T WANNA BE ALL BY MYYYYYSELF!
(click)
OMG - That's MY theme song J! I'm Bridget Jones in a realistic human form.
I first started blogging as I was going through a very dark period & had no one to talk to, & just writing it down made me feel 100% better, & it gave me an insight into my life over a period of time on how bad things really were day by day that I hadn't noticed.
Eventually we worked our way through it and we're totally happy again, so I got the satisfation of hitting the "delete blog" button and it was all gone :) So i started up a happy blog with funny odd things that happen in my life that I thought i'd just write down and well, here I am.
We as in um, my boyfriend and I, not as in "my other personality". I forgot to elaborate there!
J - I promise to stick around for at least a little while. Well, promise is such a strong word. I expect? suppose? figure? I'll be haunting your site for as long as you choose to be around yourself.
-PRAWN on the barby - That was too funny. "Me and I are doing well, again." The thought made my actually laugh out loud! (I don't usually use LOL, because I seldomely, actually, laugh out loud. But I smirk a lot).
I don't mean to imply that I don't struggle with the ego issue some. I'm a total stat and attention whore, and I'll admit that sometimes I even creep myself out with some of that. I do want people to read it, I won't deny that, but you know, if people aren't interested, they won't. If they are interested, cool.
I'd still be blogging whether anyone read it or not though. I want to get these stories out of my head and onto, well not paper I guess, but out there. Writing them in Word and storing them away in My Documents just doesn't have the same effect as publishing them out in the ether with cherries on top.
Meanwhile, I've stolen back some of what I left for you in comments here for my latest opus. :)
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