Sunday, November 26, 2006
journals
Several people I know keep journals. They use the word as a verb ("I journal") which seems jarring, but I'm almost as used to it as to 'scrapbooking'. Anyway, my point at the moment is that I envy people who journal. I've always thought it must be a splendid way of expressing and exploring one's feelings and thoughts. Blogging is related but it's not as personal. More accurately, it's personal but it's not interior or confessional. Confessional writing tends either to bore me or make me uncomfortable. I took a class once called something like 'turning the personal into stories' but the results were a lot of fairly appalling stories about rapes and cruelties that had been experienced by the participants. I have to admit that I prefer the slightly cooler atmosphere of blogging. Another important plus about blogging, for me, is that I know someone may actually read what I'm writing. (Having an audience apparently matters to me, Dr. Freud.) But there are things I'd like to write about more privately, and yet - interestingly, puzzlingly - I literally cannot write one word if I'm only writing for myself. Near-physical writer's block. A juicy conundrum, eh? Some writers, some of whom blog, don't seem to have any trouble writing very personally. I wonder if they are less fearful - and I more so - about something and, if so, what that something is. Or if the issue is something else altogether. Anyway, I'd really like to sneak around that corner and write about being a child and a parent, about interactions between family members and between friends, about how to know what makes you happy, all the things that make a person unique. I would like to explore. So what do you think: Do bloggers journal? Do journal writers blog?

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Permalink | | posted by jau at 3:17 AM


3 more:
Anonymous Anonymous — at 11:30 AM, November 26, 2006:
Showing your real self is a very touchy proposition. It opens you up to personal criticism, which on the Internet can be quite hostile and abrasive although the critics are no better than you.

The few bloggers whom I actually know are often quite hypocritical in their blogs. They will harshly and unfairly criticize others with differing points of view while not even coming close to following their own purported values.

Please don't feel any obligation to reveal more of yourself. You're just fine as you are.
 

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Blogger jau — at 3:26 PM, November 26, 2006:
Thanks for those thoughts. I agree with you. Never fear, I am not at all proposing or wishing to reveal more of myself on this blog. What I wish I could do, though, is write more revealingly and probe my thoughts in writing (somewhere other than here!) in order to understand myself better and maybe to leave an interesting discourse for my children and grandchildren.
 

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Blogger CGHill — at 8:38 PM, November 26, 2006:
There's some overlap, but over at my place, the sort-of-weekly Vent series (now in episode #510) is more journal-like, while the daily blog stuff is, well, bloggier.

As for my values, I strive to avoid holding any I can't actually follow. :)
 

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