Blogs

The cat is sitting on the living room table and staring at the birds and fishes in the TV again. She also likes the Christmas tree, which is a little worrying, since I think she keeps eating the whatchamacallits.

But anyway, I wasn't going to write about the cat today. I was planning to form an opinion. This morning, you see, in the paper a journalist wrote about blogs. I think he attempted criticism, but in the end his conclusion could be summarised as "I don't like blogs, since I think they are boring". Trendy, boring blogs; too many ordinary, boring people writing about their uneventful lives and not even attempting to contribute to the political/intellectual/critical discussion.

He tried to argue for his point of view by writing about his day. I didn't see it as quite as boring as he did, but then again some of us are more easily pleased than others. But why then, I have to ask myself, do I find writing this blog useful - not a boring, unnecessary exercise as the guy in the paper thought.

The first answer that came to me is that by writing about the day you create it. And I don't mean fabricate, au naturellement. By putting the day on paper you record it, prevent its slipping into the gray mass of the forgotten past. By writing you also recall events about the day that otherwise might have remained unimportant and, in that sense, recreate them. This however does not justify writing into a blog; for this there has forever been personal journals and private diaries.

Blogs are by their nature public - or at least potentially public. That means there must be an added interest in writing publicly. A practical interest or an advantage is the fact that writing publicly gives you a push to write. If I had started a personal journal in September, I think I would have stopped already weeks ago. Well, the jaded journalist says, then you probably don’t really have a need to write or anything to say, do you?

But that’s not it. I do, you see. By writing I come to realise that my life is actually much closer to my dream life than I ever thought. I do in a sense recreate my life and in reflecting about my life I see more clearly where it is that I want to go. The important thing about doing this reflection by the means of a blog is that it makes me “visible” also to others. Writing is a much more intimate and much more easier means to express one’s true nature than speech. This is who I am. By the means of a blog I am able to be who I am also to others, not just to myself.

Of course it is not interesting to everyone – I am quite sure that the cynical reporter would find my blog boring – but that is not the meaning of a blog, to reach the entire world. It has more to do with reaching oneself. But we cannot reach ourselves alone; we need others as a mirror in which our reflection is born. If we are not verbal people our reflection may become distorted. It resembles someone we do not recognise, someone we at least do not wish to be. Writing allows me to see in that mirror the other part of me, the part which makes me feel more balanced.