My (Ongoing) List of Embarrassing Details · 27 March 2008

Been thinking about my last oblique strategy draw:

Look closely at the most embarrassing details & amplify them.

Wondering if I should post yet another list this week, this time of embarrassing details.

Eh, whatever. This medium is revealing enough, and you don’t need to know that I secretly love the band Franz Ferdinand, that I run around the house in Dansko clogs and little else, or that I never have nightmares but occasionally get scared in the night when I dream of getting too cold. All of which embarrasses me.

The funny thing about this writing space for me in particular is that what readers I have largely belong to the old school. You are squeamish about blogging.

Like a prominent blogger who just blogged a sweet anti-blogger diatribe, you’re uneasy about this weird mixture of the personal and the public, the attention to the writer’s private life and thoughts. And the whole online community aspect: too damn weird.

I wonder if the discomfort with the medium comes from a certain discomfort with oneself? Don’t you know that writing—journalism, novels, whatever—has always been like this? Don’t you keep coming back here out of a strange appreciation for how it works?

:)

This form can be gross. Veers tawdry with a click or two. Some people are abnormally awful or starved for attention. Bloggers create a lot of culture given the low cost of their building materials and not all of it is good. You just ignore that stuff.

So whatever. It’s cool. It is easy and fluid, challenging, revealing, and gutsy. You have to bring your own style and standards to it, but for those who do it well, this is a strangely honest medium. The bloggers I like aren’t performing so much as they’re making connections within their own larger life experience, playing, maybe even figuring some stuff out.

Self-expression doesn’t have to be a big, dramatic, uncomfortable thing. Not even for a true introvert like myself. This is just about finding a few voices that work for you, keeping those channels open…, and giving yourself the chance to play, jettison what doesn’t work, and find new sides of yourself.

It is “fake,” but somehow it teaches you to be comfortable and creative in your own skins.

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1. I’ve always felt that the less you hide, the less you have to fear. I don’t know why, but it works that way in lucid dream land for me…

   Blogging is still a somewhat guilty pleasure, in that I feel if I had more self control I wouldn’t do it, or at least not so compulsively. But as weaknesses go, it feels largely benign. The people and events I’ve encountered because of it have been overwhelmingly positive. Because this is life, nothing can be entirely perfect, but I’ve been happy with my odds.

   Posted by: Boodiba · Mar 28, 07:31 AM · #

2. Indeed! I feel like the honesty (no matter what it looks like) is what makes this interesting…

   Posted by: elise · Mar 28, 07:50 AM · #

3. Hi (Ovo). Thanks for musing about blogging. It’s on my mind. I wonder if in the near future I may want to prune the archives of my blog. It’s an interesting experience. For me personally I think the writing is more inspired when my meditative states are deeper. But you’re putting it like it is. It’s like a project. You learn about yourself. You jettison what doesn’t work. It’s also community. This week, it’s been difficult for me to maintain a steady practice. So I’ve depended on reading fellow blogger’s posts and the comments by others. Sometimes the comments just warm my hearts. In fact that reminds me I need to leave a hug in one of those posts-comments sections that warmed my heart this week.
   hugs
   Arturo

   Posted by: arturo · Mar 28, 05:30 PM · #

4. Hey and gosh darn it.

   I was thinking two things:

   1. I should post an entry
   2. I should consult the owl about this mysterious pull/push of blogging.

   And synchronicity strikes again!

   Posted by: Gregor · Mar 28, 06:14 PM · #

5. :)

   Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 28, 07:53 PM · #

6. Intriguing. The layers are peeling away. That’s sort of how I see my own writing over the past 3 years of blogging. The initial posts are events in my life: places, people, physical. Mainly external. Oh and strangely perky. Each year, the posts become a little more personal, a bit more internal. But I still edit my life significantly when I post. Mostly because the mother reads it… :)

   Posted by: Jenna · Mar 30, 07:47 AM · #

7. Been thinking about this comment, J. Really interesting… what we consciously include and exclude, what we get out of our systems, and how we come to use the medium in similar ways… all over time.

   My sweet, very dramatic mom read the owl once. She was completely horrified and hurt. She swore “never to return ever again.” I said she could return if the secret urge ever hit to know this part of me, and she said No, never.

   That made me pretty sad. But it is also wonderfully liberating.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 31, 04:38 AM · #

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