Private Diary vs. Public Blog.

Ready? Here's another blog about blogging:

As much as I would love to take the credit, it was Jared who first began this blogging trend within our social group. His predecessors were Wendy and Steph. When he first started, he would write about a lot of personal experiences and feelings. That's mostly what my blog was for as well. This post, written way back when is a good example.

I've been doing a good bit of blog analyzing lately (remember, psych major - that's what I do: I analyze people, and the things they think, say, do and now blog) and have become more observant of the content of each blog in relationship to the perceived audience of every blogger.

Who is it that we are addressing when we write blog entries? How is it different from a private journal? How does that affect the content?

When I first stepped into the world of blogging, I had every intention of keeping it a private journal. I remember quite distinctly addressing my ex-boyfriends, my parents and even myself. I would say things I didn't dare or have the chance to express in real life. It was an imaginary audience. Just like we often began private journal entries with "Dear Diary", I formed a relationship with my blog. He (yes, I said he, not it) became my confidant, my best friend. Almost as soon as I had began, I opened my blog up to just Jared and Mark (ex-boyfriends, and previous confidants). My writing remained very personalized, just like a conversation with someone. Something I would put in an email and send out to close friend. My blog was like the transcript of the conversations I would hold with myself in my most private thoughts.

Every human being, I believe, has the basic desire to be heard. Babies instinctively cry when they need to be attended to. When you discover your own voice, you want people to listen. I began to crave attention and basically had this publicity campaign for my blog, emailing the link to every one I didn't mind having an "in" to my head, even though the content was highly personal. So, my readership increased just slightly, with a few people here and there really caring about what I had to say about my life. Blogging became more fun. It was like being on stage performing. I love being in the spotlight.

At the same time, Jared's blog became increasingly popular. He's a popular person, things like that transfer over into cyberspace sometimes. I'm not sure if the switch was concious or not, but (all of the sudden, or gradually, I do not know) the personal, the-Jared-I-know posts disappeared and were replaced by the entertaining posts to show of his cynical humor, every once in a while involving significant events in his life. It seems that he always wrote to an audience (maybe we all have these imaginary witnesses to our lives), but there was a definite shift in content.

Just recently, Judge also killed his blog in a sense. He still posts in it, but he keeps having to remind people that that's not a journal anymore. It's a place for thoughts and short stories.

Nearly every blogger I know still continues to write in a private journal, whether on paper or on a hidden blog. Blogging has become a social thing, not the place for intimate thoughts.

Not so with me. This blog has replaced my personal diary. I began writing in here so that I could have room to truly be myself and it really has helped me discover exactly who that is. It bothers me that this separation has to exist. I mean, I even have a hard time posting in 2 blogs. I started "The Caf" so that we could post and discuss thoughts that were detatched from our personal lives. But this blog is me. I am a product of my thoughts and I am reluctant to separate my intellect from my identity. At least that's what it feels like to me. I'd rather avoid the ambiguity of a public and private personality.

Yet, I have noticed that I don't treat this place like a private journal anymore. I haven't addressed any of the underlying themes and issues in my life at all. I have only hinted at a couple here and there. I started to write a blog about an issue I had faced a couple of weeks ago now about feeling unattractive, but I found myself writing about it in the past tense because I had already resolved the issue. It felt strange writing like that, so the draft remains incomplete. It's like waiting to go to confess to the bishop only after you've overcome the problem where he should be the one to help you resolve it. I should have written about it before, and dealt with it that way instead of trying to mask my weakness and only speaking of it in the past tense. I have also become so careful with the language that I write with. Trying to impress? Instead of writing down what I think and feel, I think about how to write what I should feel.

Something happened. I have become self-conscious. Where blogging initially helped me to be truly honest with myself and face my biggest weaknesses, now I use it more as an escape. I've become so focused on pleasing my audience that I have neglected my own emotional growth. I have, in a sense, become a sell-out.

One of the reasons I have been blogging less and less is because I don't write about the little things that are going on in my life anymore. I wait till I feel like I have something comment-worthy to say before sitting down and writing. I have developed this fear of writing about something unimportant or uniteresting that I haven't allowed myself any weaknesses. As a result, I have belittled my own follies and have chosen to ignore them as opposed to admitting them and dealing with them. In trying hard to look good on paper, I have become less of myself because I'm constantly worried about what people would think of me. Does the "fake it till you make it" rule apply here?

I think it's wonderful that I have been putting so much thought into the bigger issues like feminism and different philosophies that I have personlaized. I have grown so much intellectually in just this semester alone, but that's not all I want to be. I enjoy reading a wide variety of blogs. The intellectual, the humorous, but the ones I enjoy the most are the most deeply personal ones. Introspectre, for example, has my utmost respect because she is so in tune with herself. I love reading her blog because it exubes personality. She writes so openly about the issues that haunt her consciousness and her life, but still manages to crack me up with the little fun things she puts on there. Through her writing, I can sense a genuine connection to life. Not some superficial, high-gloss, "let's talk about living" blog. In essence, I want to be like her because she is real.

Ah. The irony. I think someone I have never met is real.

I am not sure what I need to do to get back in touch with myself. There are some things that really may be too private to put on here. How will I be able to become the blogger I idealize? How necessary is being completely open? Too much disclosure could be harmful. Some things are meant to be kept secret. I guess thinking/blogging about it is a good start.

However impractical it may be, I will fight having to write in different places for different purposes. That feels to me like cutting up my body into pieces and organizing them into boxes. Not every person will appreciate every single thing that I have to say, and there may be little connection between the different sides of Fei, but hey, this is who I am. An integrated whole of strengths and weakenesses.

It's the popsicle rule: you get what you get.