When I started this blog some 2 years ago, there was only one person, to my knowledge, reading it. Initially, I recalled being very skeptical about jumping on the bandwagon because it seemed like another culture fad and I detest culture fads and popularity polls. I'm anti-friendster and anti-ipod by the way. I don't believe that one should endeavour to follow what society deems as hot or not. It just seems so mindless and superficial. With blogging, there were a couple more other cons. I didn't like the idea of writing a so called journal without being completely honest to myself because I believe that no matter how you try to be open or indifferent to the fact that other people might chance upon your deepest confessions, you will always carry that self-censorship rule whenever you write. Whether you know it or not. Unless you are a blatant exhibitionist or staunch narcissist of course.
The Internet has broken alot of rules and barriers of privacy. It is so accessible that anything you put up can be headlines the next day. If not headlines on the tabloids then headlines making its way round some grapevine. Anyway the point is, when you blog, regardless of how compulsive or earnest it is, at the back of your head in your subconscious realm, there would always be this niggering voice telling you that someone might or is going to read it. That hint of caution and rationality that judges what can be unveiled and what should be kept under wraps. Trust me, if there wasn't this amount of self-censorship and partial sanity around, you'll probably get really disturbing or provoking messages that you would rather not know. Actually, I already think they do exist. Besides, I'm sure all of us would also like to retain some privacy to ourselves. Things that we'll prefer not to divulge, blogging or not. For me, I choose to be public with my private (not what you think it is) by layering as much skeptism as possible.
Then why did I embark on this dubious journey, you retort. As I maintained, I was very snobbish towards the idea of blogging. Over time, I've came to realize the ups and downs of blogging. For one I think its a good practice for writing. I've never had a penchant for writing. I always found it a challenge to express things that i feel or think into words. Amazingly, as confusing as some of my posts are, I'm slowly starting to effectively translate my thoughts into words. Blogging is more convenient in the sense that you type instead of write. Writing long passages can really tire my hand and after awhile, I'll just throw in the towel. This laziness and ill-discipline actually led to alot of uncompleted and missing pages, which until now I deeply regret. Typing is also much faster. Your words can probably match the speed of your rambling thoughts much better. Mistakes are a breeze to correct with the backspace key. Remember those days when assignments used to be hand-written? I missed that. Not actually.
Ever since the computers took over our life and the teachers ruled that all assignments be formally typed out, our fingers have gotten used to the sleek keyboard from alphabets A to Z. I reckon most of us are pretty qualified typists now. With blogging, the sentences are somehow more structured and the language more precise though not exactly flawless. It's different from scribbling in a notebook where shorthands and mistakes are acceptable.
I think it might have to do with a button called publish. According to the dictionary, publish in this sense is preparing and issuing printed material for public distribution or sale. Perhaps, that click which would etch our thoughts into cyberspace makes us more self-conscious and thus meticulous about our work. Since it would be subjected to the public, grammatical errors and incoherence becomes glaringly conspicuous. Hence we tend to scrutinize our writings even more. So blogging does improve our writing in this way, doesn't it?
I won't really refer to it as a con but as I known from the start, blogging is never going to be an all out confessional booth. There are always things that I'll prefer not to say here or anywhere or to anybody for that matter. That doesn't mean that I'm sneaky because what you read is what I choose to share. Afterall, everyone has the right to their privacy. Blogs can never reveal who a person really is, his/her character, because in this dimension, truth is represented in the final product that has gone through a certain level of gatekeeping. In real life, we are more prone to errors and flaws we cannot hide. Morever, the reader may not interpret correctly the writer's context. Perhaps you could have an inkling of the protaganist's nature but you should never assume that you know him/her thoroughly. How would you know whether its pure honesty or just a deliberate facade? You would never cognize unless you know that individual through and through. In other words, a really nasty blogger may actually just be a nice lad attempting a Darth Vader while a seemingly innocuous blog could be home to a terrorist wannabe. So sometimes, whatever you consume from a blog, you should just take it with a pinch of salt. Lest your gut tells you otherwise.
I hope this explains the weird posts, the lack of personal photos and the absence of lively everyday updates on this page. Different blogs just have different purposes.
I know it's not fantastic but considering i spent 10 mins on the poster. It's passable for my low standards.
