Monday, March 23, 2009

Naked Blogger - Almost

The following post is my article that will appear in the upcoming, brand-new publication [in]visible this semester at Scripps College - be sure to read it when it comes out! This article is pertinent because it's all about blogging and my experiences so far in this online form of publication. It's all raw, straight from my Word-document that is now being processed by the editors, so please keep in mind the intended audience: students at a women's college as well as the students in the surrounding four colleges. I also apologize for the preachiness, but the theme around which [in]visible is centered is providing college women a positive self-conception that is not purely based on physicality and images.

"Journal-writing is something I do for myself so that I can look back, see the progression life has taken, and then look forward to the blank page’s expectance of new experiences. A journal can be as poorly written as the writer wants it to be because it is not meant for anyone else to look at. Journals contain personal thoughts to be hidden away and infrequently divulged. Blogs, on the other hand, are another matter entirely.

"Blogs are meant to be public, to be shared, and provoke discussion, insight, and commentary, something I did not understand when I started my own blog in order to write this article. Since I started my blog, I have discovered for myself how public it is. It has an audience, and I found myself putting more and more thought into my posts, examining how they were written, and wondering if they were polished to a sufficient degree. I wanted to make my blog understandable and exciting in order to make friends of mine want to read it for pleasure, instead of feeling obliged to do so by a link I posted on their Facebook walls.

"For me, writing is a tool to make sense of confusing issues, ranging from academic to personal and everywhere in between, as well as a cathartic exercise. After having written down an event that caused me frustration, such as a heated phone call with my sister, I am cleansed because I have physically expelled those feelings from that call. Thinking that a blog is a type of electronic journal that few people would see, I wrote that I missed home late one night. My plan backfired spectacularly, as I received several responses condoling me when I thought no one would notice my post. In all honesty, I was not that homesick, and I felt naked that others had seen my confession of weakness.

"Although blogs are handy for writing down a quick update on one’s life, blogs can be open to as many people as stumble upon them. My problem was that I did not realize just how open to the world a blog could be. At first I felt as if I had been invaded, but now I publish what I am doing or thinking about with a little more caution than I did at my the start of my blogging experience. I did not want to be critiqued for what I was saying, to have my friends think that what or how I thought was weird or odd. Journaling is like being in a crystal tower – I could think and express myself, but I was not willing to share what I thought, and to let myself accept the fact that others may think I was wrong or miss the point of what I was saying. My self-confidence does not have its foundation on what others think about me. My thoughts are valid in their own right because I am a thinking human in the midst of achieving her higher education.

"Life and thinking are not solitary things. They cannot be pent-up and written only in a journal; what we think must rub against what other people think. A blog, and the internet, as many people have already discovered, is a pretty good way to do that.

"Needless to say, I have learned what to publish, whom to invite to see my blog, and to not be afraid when people may challenge what I am thinking about, and to not be put out when people do not respond to issues that I may think are important. My self-worth lies in the fact that I am thinking, not what other people think."

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