I realise there\’s only been a handful of entries this year and that the site has been down more than up. It\’s been somewhat intentional by the fact I\’ve found myself less and less involved, inspired and in-love with the online world. It\’s become a bunch of blah, blah, blah lately. Boring. Myself included.
For the past several months I haven\’t read people\’s blogs or personal bits and for good reason – I don\’t want to know people\’s lives by their blog lines. I\’ve actually had friends whose response to the \”How are you doing\” question be, \”well you can read it on my web site.\” For me, that doesn\’t work.There\’s become an assumption that everyone reads everyone\’s blogs and people write and live for others now. Have an experience? One must blog about how fucking fantastic the pizza was or how Jimmy broke up with me or how things fell apart again but I\’m going to pick myself right back up!It\’s strange to me how a lot of people who write and read personal blogs do so religiously – almost obsessively – and tend to assume that everyone does it, knows about it, participates in it, too. These people tend to forget there\’s a whole world out there that doesn\’t know blogspot.com or what\’s going around or who they newest it person is. Some people feel that if they don\’t record their experience on their blog it didn\’t really happen and others feel if they don\’t comment on those experiences they\’ll never get noticed. People and things tend get blown way out of proportion in blogs and blogging life. Some minions hitting a site several times a day can make some blog creators feel like rock stars and then the whole slippery slope starts there.
It\’s not bitterness that drives this post, honestly, though I understand some people will think so or think this a rant just because it\’s not filled with something uplifting, personal or cute. And when a post lacks those things it\’s often met with anger, hostility, and desertion – another things that\’s a little sad about the online world as of late. Sometimes one just has to make statements based on observations that have no personal feeling involved (I\’m neither upset, angry, bitter nor happy about it. It just is what it is). After 10 years of writing on a personal web site, I\’ve seen changes happen and the whole personal web evolve. And what it’s evolved into is something I just don’t really care too much for at the moment.
In fact, I tend to think personal blogging has become more like reality TV – it started off real, with good intentions, shedding light in areas never seen before but now it\’s all scripted, managed and carefully created to maintain an image, popularity and standing. Everyone wants to be liked, measures their worth by comments and emails and if they said the latest thing that gets people talking.It\’s my strong belief that one can\’t really connect online nor can one find answers to how to really lead a life. To find the answer, the direction one must go is offline and just live within themselves for awhile, without trying to figure out how to write it for others or how to respond to their favourite so they can be in the clique too. One must go offline and just experience – live, try, do, with the only worry being how they feel at the end of the day – not how they can blog about it. And one can\’t find answers just by reading self-help web sites or by reading others having experiences – vicarious living is not living. No one has your answers.
\”If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint or teacher, but life itself — direct experience of life.\” -Henry Miller, Books in My Life
P.S. I should like to note that sites that are about information and ideas, I find that useful and interesting despite not keeping up to date with them all and that I do know that not all the web and not all personal sites are crap. There\’s actually some really good ones. Some examples? Voila
P.P.S. How do I fit into all of this? No bloody idea.