I have been doing this for a while now, a year to be exact. What was that I heard last night? That there are only a few more minutes left of this year to complete your New Year’s resolution from last year before you have to make a new one? Ah yes, how true. But this year I have kept up with mine and succeeded in keeping a blog. It has finally happened. For a whole year I have maintained this journal, without pause, and without making any disastrous errors or indiscretions.
I set out thinking that through my research I knew what blogging was all about. I cited and dismissed many of the perils of blogging and set about creating a set of rules which would keep me safe from all that nonsense. It is worth noting that in this past year I have broken each and every one of them:
I have written things which I would not like my mother to hear
I have written things where the subjects of the writing would not be pleased to hear my opinions on them
I have vented, but to my credit I have thought as well
I have written things a possible enemy would love to get their hands on and use against me
I have written blogs when I did not at all feel like it, and I have not felt like it quite often enough to satisfy my appetite and that of my readers’ at times
This is because I have indeed tried to explain everything; a hard battle, which I still refuse to admit I am losing.
But my blog, and indeed myself, have changed so much from that first post; and even more since the first unpublished trials back in 2006. My blog has become so much more than I could ever have dreamed. A constant feature of my life this last year, it has proved a great source of amusement; a place where my cathartic ranting can serve a purpose; the conductor of many unexpected and fortunate internet friendships; a medium thorough which many life lessons were learnt; a place of hope, empathy, love, art, and connectedness; a worthy stage for my writing; a valuable creative outlet; and hence more of intellectual playground than I thought; a hub for my mixed media empire; a place when I can put my audible talents to work; a vehicle to transport me to the most personal, distant, exotic places, that I would have previously been unable to experience; and something that has had me run the full gamut of emotions, not only in my own story, but in feeling the ripples of that spread across the internet and return to me.
And so I leave you with this quote, which Musings brought to my attention on her blog; from “What Is The What” by Dave Eggers.
“It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words... How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”
☆
Wednesday 31 December 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
between 'Select' and 'Name' to play the file, or 
at the end to download, then wait for your link to appear.
As you are sure not long from posting new blogs, and are struggling with a new, dazzling, scary life, i thought i'd finish commenting the posts i had neglected.. well at least this last batch.
ReplyDeletebut swiftly, because they were short and i'm of course supposed to be doing other things, like we all do.
I liked this one, and i think you were quite inspired. Breaking the rules and all that you've learned and did with the blog, it is a fine summary of what you've found here. I hope that university will leave you enough time to explore more mixed medias experiments, podcasts ambiancing, music mixing, maybe short movies making ? I feel like we haven't seen enough of the art part of what you do, and I would really love to see what you can come up with and how you could incorporate it in the narrative of your blog, beyond the written and spoken word yu already use.. Relevant collage of images, enigmatic illustration, the possibilities are endless.
I'm eager to see more.