Okay. So I decided to write something little, something small whenever I feel like it. Isn’t that really what writing is all about? I mean, writing doesn’t really move mountains, or solve the economic crisis. You may try to hit someone hard with words, but a baseball bat is better. A few years ago, I saw a big cow eat an entire book. Didn’t make the creature any wiser. She was still standing, tied to a pole, the last I remember.
So then, why do I bother to write these blogs? But more intriguing a question than that, why do some people read other people’s blogs? I mean don’t students just hate assigned readings and teachers hate grading essays? How many students will have their grandmothers die multiple deaths rather than admit they just didn’t do it or teachers invent departmental meetings to avoid contact with the written word in the form of student papers?
So why would you read the ramblings of someone you don’t even know leave alone stand to gain something from?
Now that got me thinking.
Ironically, what got me thinking was reading your blogs.
So here I am, jotting down a few ideas about why we’re reading and writing blogs.
The return of the common person: I mean hadn’t the common person all but disappeared from the printed word? There used to be a whole hierarchy of agents, publishers, newspapers, protocol, cultural privilege, access–all that is gone. The common person can express herself/ himself through blogs that others can read.
Capturing a moment or a thought: We can catch apparently inconsequential little things in blogs in a way we couldn’t before. They used to be lost but now people actually put them down and have pictures to go with them. They all add up to our awareness of the moment, don’t they?
Being able to relate: I know I can always relate to the boy/ girl next door far better than oh! you oracle on the mountaintop. I was never one for meritocracy in the field of writing. Or any “ocracy” for that matter. Moments, life experiences, thoughts happen to everyone. Those at the top of the writing ladder are not necessarily the ones I can relate to as I do with folks in the blogs simply putting down their thoughts.
Getting advice: If I’m thinking of decorating a wall or buying shoes, I’d rather ask someone like myself rather than Martha Stewart. I mean, I’d do that too but I’d like some affirmation from my friendly bloggers. If I have a paper due tomorrow and I haven’t even started it, I’d rather get advice from people like myself rather than those book authors who probably had their lives planned the day they were born.
Helping me become a better writer: Ahh, just browsing through some blogs helps me feel like I’m in the company of others who value writing. As that value becomes rarer and rarer in the outside world, here’s a room full of people who enjoy writing.
I just like browsing though blogs because I feel like I’m immersing myself in ephemeral thoughts of myriad voices of passing people. I was tired of the loud, booming voices of books and factual essays all around me that had lost the ephemeral quality of life.
To make a point, to achieve a goal is necessary to live but to live, to experience, is life.
People’s blogs, for me, is life.
[This is an old post from May 24, 2012.]
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