Writing this blog presents a new framework for me that I am not quite comfortable with. It’s a twilight, in between, not-sure-of-my-footing kind of feeling. At first I was enthusiastic about it because I like to write and I like to think. The blog was supposed to provide an incentive for producing a mixture of the two on a regular basis. The trouble is the dual nature of the medium. Although many blogs are meant to be public and are written with the goal of being widely read, that’s not my intention here (although if scads of people are interested in what I’m thinking, well, ok with me). But while I write for personal clarification and practice, I’m also aware that this is a public space so I need to be as clear as possible in case someone else is reading. I’m writing for my own edification, or whatever, but I’m also writing for an audience.
Rereading this, it does not seem like the blog should present a dilemma, but it does. I guess I haven’t clarified my intention for the blog to myself. In an earlier post I wrote about excercising and practice. One of my intentions with the blog was to get that excercise in my writing, to build skill and endurance for translating my thoughts into words. But then I started to write and think about things that effect me on a personal level. And I wondered “Why am I doing this in a place that anyone has access to?’
A wierd thing happened at around the time of my last post that I still haven’t figured out. I sent an email to an author, Akhim Yuseff Cabey whomI had read in my favorite literary magazine, The Sun. I thought his essay was fresh and exceptional. And because he listed his email address in his bio, I wrote to him, something I’ve never done before. He wrote back with a thoughtful and thought provoking reply. A positive experience. The thing that I can’t explain is that he referenced my blog in his reply to my email. I didn’t know the two were linked. I wrote to him again and asked how he knew about the blog but didn’t get a reply to that query. Although this is only one factor in why I haven’t written for so long, I know it has definitely played a part. It’s not that it bothered me that he had read the blog or even that I want to keep my email correspondence separate from what I write here (wel, maybe in some instances) but it did underscore for me the public/private blurring that is a part of Internet writing.
If I wait to post this until it I’ve worked out the ideas, I won’t ever do it. My list of drafts will attest to this. So apologies if anyone is reading for the abrupt ending. This is another reason why blog writing feels like a twilight endeavor – the ideas are not quite fleshed out, a little gray and indistinct. That’s the nature of how I see this forum and at the same time this goes against everything I’ve worked to do in my writing up til now.
