The Nature of Blogging

So I write my blog for myself. I know everyone probably says that, but when you start to creep up in numbers of visitors past the few local friends you tell about your blog, and people who are strangers start to comment & become blog-friends, you can sometimes forget that. I think it's possible that I alienated a few of my normally regular readers with my post about being a Republican last week. Well, I had to write it, and I did, and from Terry's comments that he had already figured my political persuasion out from former posts, I am surprised that the ones who left did. But it does make me a bit sad. And paranoid. Why did those few readers really stop commenting? Do they hate me now? Am I shunned, am I still linked on their blogs, am I.... (you see the neuroses at work here, right?) If I'm really writing for myself, I shouldn't care right? Well, I'm a big liar too.

I fall into patterns of reading one or two blogs every day, and clicking only every couple of days on others. Sometimes I'll realize it's been a week since I read a blog that I normally read, and then I feel guilty. I don't comment every day on the blogs I read; sometimes, the comment would be an inane "wow, me too" or something lame like that. But then I get depressed when no one comments on my blog. I've had a pattern, lately, of more male commenters than female, and that leads me to wonder why. I have, in my own life, often had more male friends than female, so it's not a huge surprise. But it still makes me think. Is my writing alienating to women? Or do they just not have anything to comment about today? Or are they skipping me cause there's no way you can read everyone and still get work done? Sigh. I'm hopeless.

And therein lies the point of this post. Blogging is a weird public/private act. In a graduate class I once had, another person called the personal affirmation type things that sometimes show up inappropriately in classroom debate "Howling at the moon." I laughed, cause I knew what she meant, but sometimes I think of blogging that way. The moon is up there, doesn't notice us, but we feel compelled to howl anyway.

Comments on some blogs can become ugly-- I've seen it happen on other blogs, and have had one snipey little wench make a mean comment about me (and got herself banned) one day. Some bloggers get in the hundreds of commenters. I usually comment a "related" point-- and sometimes it's just encouragement, or "me-tooism."

And then I feel sometimes that my post is banal and stupid and boring. But it's a daily log of what I do, and sometimes I look back at it and it reminds me of my daily life, the things I haven't written about, the things I do write about.

What I had for lunch today: Spagettios. I miss spagettios. My hubby always scoffs, says he'd rather have real spagetti. But Spagettios are NOT meant to be real spagetti. They are another form of food altogether. There's something in that little can filled with various sized pasta O's and that oddly orange tomato sauce that evokes for me teenager-hood. There were holidays that my mother had to work and I ate nothing but spagettios for dinner (before you think that sounds awful, it WASN'T-- it was my choice, my favorite, and we had the turkey on mom's next day off).

So that's a blog entry in a nutshell-- it evokes a sensory memory for some. It might be disgust. It might be "me too" which inspires them to comment. It might be "bleah. I am not reading this chick again, she's banal and boring. I'd rather read about the Sex in the City, Bridget Jonesish exploits of cute New Yorkers".

But it is a quick little snapshot of someone else's brain, thoughts of the day, a little bit of voyeurism and a little bit of community. Some folks are reading from work cubicles, some are at home with kids, some are working on various projects (novels, dissertations). Some are political; I like to get my daily dose of young idealism from them and it makes me sad when they are clearly exhausted of it.

Blogging. It's the new black. And mine has cat hair and fuzzies from the couch all over it.