Reflections
Reflections
I’ve been on hiatus for quite some time and I sense that there is a continuing malaise which pervades me preventing me from adding more to the blog. Perhaps it’s a matter of not wanting to repeat myself. Or perhaps it’s more a matter of not having anything to say. Or, perhaps it’s more of a sense that the time required to craft posts which rise to the level that I insist on is greater than I want to dedicate at this time. Or, perhaps I don’t want to limit the blog to a recitation of sightings of glorious fat women or similar such simple daily travelogue stuff.
My life has muddled on since the last times I’ve posted without a whole lot of substantive change. Of course things have happened, people have done things, I’ve reacted, emoted, responded, etc. But none of that has been related to the core vision or voice of this blog. So, in the absence of profundity I have preferred to be mute.
My reading of others blogs is relatively limited. I have found as time has progressed how frequently blogging seems to follow an arc from early excitement to blossoming maturity of purpose to exasperation and extinction. So many bloggers gush, as I did in the early days of their blogs, clearing the pipes, so to speak, of the pent up thoughts yearning to be free. With apologies to Emma Lazarus, having viewed the blogger’s statue of liberty, the passion, excitement and urgency of the early days fades. Perhaps this is very much like personal relationships which erupt in the early bloom of exploration, lust, passion and newness, but must then transition to a deeper and more mature stage, setting down roots, or dying on the vine without growing to adulthood and bearing fruit.
So many of the promising blogs that I read before I started mine and then read after mine came into being have come into being, flowered and now lay fallow. Few of these even gave notice of their passing or had a proper burial. Most just exist in the state of being as of the last post or comment, forever in anticipation of the next words. One ponders whether the bloggers are deceased, dying, decrepit, dillydallying on other things in real life or the net, or perhaps just lost their passwords(or had them hacked and then changed) and are prevented from even accessing their own blogs. This last one was new to me until I spoke with someone with a Yahoo site with their name and pictures attached who advised that they had no further control over the site because someone had hacked their password and now they couldn’t “get in” to change the site and Yahoo wouldn’t do anything about it. C’est la internet vie.
As I look at those bloggers I’ve read who have sustained themselves and their blogs over extended periods of time, and there aren’t many of them that I read, I often see the bloggers feeling a burden in putting the electrons to screen at times, but through force of will and perhaps just stubborness extend themselves to get something down, no matter how brief or banal in the hopes that the regular posting will serve some useful purpose in their lives.
I wonder, for these wonderful folks who persevere, whether they go back on occasion to review the posts they’ve made, either to see how their states of mind and being have changed or just to revisit some old friends. Some of these folks seem to blog as a way of keeping track of their journey. Others seem to blog to keep touch with the world and vent what seems to infuriate, excite or depress them. Others seem to blog because they have a physical need to keep expressing themselves.
For me, this need to express myself in words seems to be the strongest urge. At times this urge is met with my blog posts. At other times its met by email correspondence which can get as lengthy and involved as my blog posts have been. At other times I’ve wandered into the Dimensions Boards and expressed myself at length in that venue. However, I usually lose interest in that forum due to the depressingly overbearing short attention span of that medium and the way in which thoughtful comments are often hijacked, ridiculed or otherwise undermined. While it is the most wonderful environment in the BBW/FA world and one which I’m richly grateful for existing, I find that my natural predilection not to suffer fools would make me a pariah in short order if I spent too much time there. On other occasions I’ve visited the Dimensions Chatboard, but again, find that venue to be very limited both by the nature of the process and by the cattiness of many of the long time denizens. Perhaps it’s more a reflection of my growing impatience, but I find the number of close-minded, relatively uneducated(and I’m not referring to years of study but inherent lack of knowledge and study of life, our world and topics relevant to the BBW/FA world), immature individuals who pop in and out to be tiresome and toxic. Using a term from the field of electrical energy, the signal to noise ratio is way too low. There isn’t enough interesting discourse to justify the filtering out of all the boorish, stupid, repetitive, repeating, duplicative, unoriginal, posturing noise.
So, now I’m back with the blog and hoping that I make the time to ponder things that interest me. Early in my blogging I was more concerned with others reading my blog, commenting and getting some sense of recognition than I am now. I know that there are a few of my friends who read my blog and get some satisfaction from that activity. In this more mature phase of my blogging I find that thought sufficiently rewarding to meet whatever need for acceptance remains. In the early phases of the blogging I was intent on turning people on to my blog, hoping that they’d find something new, useful or interesting in it. This was particularly true with people who seemed to be struggling with similar issues that I’d struggled with and blogged. However, as the blog went on and the volume of the writing continued to grow new people were often overwhelmed by how many words there were and the difficulty of reading the blog in the order it was written. Somehow I find the posts to be more relevant in the order they were written, though most of the posts are independent works. Sometime soon I think I will collect all of the posts in one document, just to see how long it really is. If I do that I’ll share it with the blog. Something self-referential and similar to the photographs of mirrors reflecting into infinity in that.
Well, now that I’ve gotten myself worked up here I need to find a way to end things. In the absence of other inspiration…. That’s all folks…. For now. I do feel the tingle of excitement once again in writing for the blog, so stay tuned.
I’ve been on hiatus for quite some time and I sense that there is a continuing malaise which pervades me preventing me from adding more to the blog. Perhaps it’s a matter of not wanting to repeat myself. Or perhaps it’s more a matter of not having anything to say. Or, perhaps it’s more of a sense that the time required to craft posts which rise to the level that I insist on is greater than I want to dedicate at this time. Or, perhaps I don’t want to limit the blog to a recitation of sightings of glorious fat women or similar such simple daily travelogue stuff.
My life has muddled on since the last times I’ve posted without a whole lot of substantive change. Of course things have happened, people have done things, I’ve reacted, emoted, responded, etc. But none of that has been related to the core vision or voice of this blog. So, in the absence of profundity I have preferred to be mute.
My reading of others blogs is relatively limited. I have found as time has progressed how frequently blogging seems to follow an arc from early excitement to blossoming maturity of purpose to exasperation and extinction. So many bloggers gush, as I did in the early days of their blogs, clearing the pipes, so to speak, of the pent up thoughts yearning to be free. With apologies to Emma Lazarus, having viewed the blogger’s statue of liberty, the passion, excitement and urgency of the early days fades. Perhaps this is very much like personal relationships which erupt in the early bloom of exploration, lust, passion and newness, but must then transition to a deeper and more mature stage, setting down roots, or dying on the vine without growing to adulthood and bearing fruit.
So many of the promising blogs that I read before I started mine and then read after mine came into being have come into being, flowered and now lay fallow. Few of these even gave notice of their passing or had a proper burial. Most just exist in the state of being as of the last post or comment, forever in anticipation of the next words. One ponders whether the bloggers are deceased, dying, decrepit, dillydallying on other things in real life or the net, or perhaps just lost their passwords(or had them hacked and then changed) and are prevented from even accessing their own blogs. This last one was new to me until I spoke with someone with a Yahoo site with their name and pictures attached who advised that they had no further control over the site because someone had hacked their password and now they couldn’t “get in” to change the site and Yahoo wouldn’t do anything about it. C’est la internet vie.
As I look at those bloggers I’ve read who have sustained themselves and their blogs over extended periods of time, and there aren’t many of them that I read, I often see the bloggers feeling a burden in putting the electrons to screen at times, but through force of will and perhaps just stubborness extend themselves to get something down, no matter how brief or banal in the hopes that the regular posting will serve some useful purpose in their lives.
I wonder, for these wonderful folks who persevere, whether they go back on occasion to review the posts they’ve made, either to see how their states of mind and being have changed or just to revisit some old friends. Some of these folks seem to blog as a way of keeping track of their journey. Others seem to blog to keep touch with the world and vent what seems to infuriate, excite or depress them. Others seem to blog because they have a physical need to keep expressing themselves.
For me, this need to express myself in words seems to be the strongest urge. At times this urge is met with my blog posts. At other times its met by email correspondence which can get as lengthy and involved as my blog posts have been. At other times I’ve wandered into the Dimensions Boards and expressed myself at length in that venue. However, I usually lose interest in that forum due to the depressingly overbearing short attention span of that medium and the way in which thoughtful comments are often hijacked, ridiculed or otherwise undermined. While it is the most wonderful environment in the BBW/FA world and one which I’m richly grateful for existing, I find that my natural predilection not to suffer fools would make me a pariah in short order if I spent too much time there. On other occasions I’ve visited the Dimensions Chatboard, but again, find that venue to be very limited both by the nature of the process and by the cattiness of many of the long time denizens. Perhaps it’s more a reflection of my growing impatience, but I find the number of close-minded, relatively uneducated(and I’m not referring to years of study but inherent lack of knowledge and study of life, our world and topics relevant to the BBW/FA world), immature individuals who pop in and out to be tiresome and toxic. Using a term from the field of electrical energy, the signal to noise ratio is way too low. There isn’t enough interesting discourse to justify the filtering out of all the boorish, stupid, repetitive, repeating, duplicative, unoriginal, posturing noise.
So, now I’m back with the blog and hoping that I make the time to ponder things that interest me. Early in my blogging I was more concerned with others reading my blog, commenting and getting some sense of recognition than I am now. I know that there are a few of my friends who read my blog and get some satisfaction from that activity. In this more mature phase of my blogging I find that thought sufficiently rewarding to meet whatever need for acceptance remains. In the early phases of the blogging I was intent on turning people on to my blog, hoping that they’d find something new, useful or interesting in it. This was particularly true with people who seemed to be struggling with similar issues that I’d struggled with and blogged. However, as the blog went on and the volume of the writing continued to grow new people were often overwhelmed by how many words there were and the difficulty of reading the blog in the order it was written. Somehow I find the posts to be more relevant in the order they were written, though most of the posts are independent works. Sometime soon I think I will collect all of the posts in one document, just to see how long it really is. If I do that I’ll share it with the blog. Something self-referential and similar to the photographs of mirrors reflecting into infinity in that.
Well, now that I’ve gotten myself worked up here I need to find a way to end things. In the absence of other inspiration…. That’s all folks…. For now. I do feel the tingle of excitement once again in writing for the blog, so stay tuned.
posted by hugehugefan at 8:13 AM
1 Comments:
Everyone blogs for their own reasons, though it would be fair to assume that whatever one's reasons are, there are great deal of other people with similar motivation.
The wonderful thing with blogs is that there aren't any real rules but the ones you set forth yourself (and whatever technical/social issues which might crop up). There's no shame in changing the rules along the way. Indeed, if your blog is going to grow and prosper, the rules will probably have to change.
I know my own diary has gone on for several years now. I agree the quality is mixed, and my passion is not what it was years ago. I do post in it just to keep it going, because it is sad when a diary dies for no apparent reason. I don't want that to be me! With any luck, I'll know when it's time to finish it, and it will be finished. The other reason I post when there's no real reason to is... there is a reason. I've learned to write what I think to learn my life from what I write. I focus my thoughts, and a lot of thoughts come out that are never recorded, but the process is important. A lot of times I'll write something which has no place in my diary, and it never appears. Other times, it's barely passable, but I've written it, so why not post it? My target audience is me. I write for me. I write to me. I *do* love an audience, but I think that's only natural. My audience helps me think, which makes it very therapeutic.
So, my advice is: keep writing. Quality will not always be there. Not everything Picasso put to canvas is in a museum, but the 'bad paintings' are important, because without them, he wouldn't have made the 'good paintings'. If you write enough, you'll stumble on something worth posting, and what you do with the garbage, well, one man's trash is another man's treasure, right?
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