The Blog-o-sphere

I have been reading friends' blogs for the past hour and a half. A blog-friend of mine recently wrote this line: "I'm not into self-revelatory blogs, so I'm not going to spin this one out in self-indulgent fashion." And I think this is exactly why I find his blog a little tedious from time to time. He makes a really intense effort to not make things about himself, unless he's making fun of himself for being an old man. It takes a lot of reading to glean much about him as a person, and that is all I really want from his blog. I suppose he thinks it would be narcissistic of him to be self-revelatory in his blogs.

I realized, upon reading this, that that is exactly what my blog is: self-revelatory and self-indulgent. Sure, I have thoughts on politics and the news and theology and such. What is strange is that I feel even more narcissistic when I try to blog about those things. Because who the hell cares about my thoughts on those things? Like I'm an authority. You can form your own opinion on those things without me. There is a certain narcissism, I suppose, in bothering to say anything in a public space, because you assume your voice is worth hearing. You don't escape that by writing about politics or pop culture.

And the thing is, our voices do matter, and I do want to hear what you have to say. That's why I read your blog. But really, I would rather know about you than your thoughts on Hillary Clinton. I only care about your thoughts on Hillary Clinton insofar as they tell me about you, or inasmuch as your thoughts on Hillary Clinton overlap with mine and give us some common ground. I do have a couple friends that write revolutionary sorts of blogs about philosophy and theology and ideas, and I love reading those too. But it's the personal in them that I love. It's you and me together discovering this new thing.

I also really like my friend, Jordan's, blog, and he doesn't really fit into any of these categories. He mostly just posts links to articles and writes a little paragraph about them. He is just someone I am confident has good taste in "interesting," so if he tells me a news story is good, I know it's good. Like a websurfing buddy. I am sort of impressed at his ability to do this. Most people who just have link-blogs I never bother following the links. But you know you can count on Jordan.

Anyway, all that to say, I recognize my blog is all about me, and I am ok with that. Because the blogs I have just been reading for the past hour and a half are 100% totally about my friends and what they're thinking about and dealing with, and that is exactly why I loved reading them. I find people really fascinating.

This post, however, is pretty boring, I think, and scatter-brained. Sorry if you bothered reading it. I just needed to sit down and think through, once and for all, why I'm ok writing about myself, no matter who thinks it's self-indulgent. All it is is a public journal, and I don't think it's self-indulgent to keep a journal. So why would it be self-indulgent to share that journal with the world?