Blog Jam

I’m beginning to see why blogging is such a sticky medium. It’s meant to be ephemeral, yet it has more permanence than verbal communication. I can mouth off on the blog one day and feel certain that after a few posts, people probably won’t dip too far into the archives. Thus, that bitchy blog hardly carries a lasting effect. However, the archive is still there for anyone’s perusal as long as you don’t delete the posts, and even when you do there are weird search sites that can keep copies of your postings long after you wished they were gone.

Also, I’ve found that I tend to blog most often when I’m angry, and thus, the overall effect of my blog has become more of a whine-fest and less of what I had originally wanted it to be: a posting of journal style, literary entries. I tend to get this desired, more writerly effect when I handwrite letters to friends or family, yet when I write in a hard-copy journal, I tend to just complain. I’ve started several journals to practice my personal writing, but they always dwindle off. Instead, I’ve started keeping copies of letters that I write so that I can look back at the kinds of things that inspire me to write well and when I’m just blathering on.

Another reason I wanted to keep a blog, other than practicing writing for an audience (albeit a very supportive and small one), was to keep in touch with friends and family. Only a couple of my friends keep blogs, but I tend to feel most in touch with them because of it. Now that I live so far from all the people that I really care about, it seemed like a good way of maintaining closeness even with great distance. However, because the blog is a public medium, I end up writing less personal accounts. I hesitate to post freely about the uglier passing emotions, such as depression, embarrassment, or anger with one’s spouse or family members. I still need handwritten correspondence, email, and telephone to really keep in touch with people.

Finally, blogging is quite a bit more of a commitment than I thought it would be. Not posting on your blog often has more meaning than you want it to. For example, when I took a month-long break at the end of the semester, I heard from readers (all two of them) that for weeks I hadn’t been doing anything but whining about gardening (the topic of my last entry). Like a newspaper or magazine editor, the blogger has to maintain a steady stream of fresh material to keep her audience happy. My schoolmates want to have a blog associated with our student on-line science magazine (in the works), but I don't think that I could take that on without serious hestitation. On top of all my other school work, I'd hate to feel obligated to post as often as you need to to keep appearances up-to-date. I mean, how often do you have something brilliant or even semi-interesting to say about science, or life for that matter?

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