The Universe is Peering Back...

For the longest time, I thought that the internet was some vague, formless pool into which I sent my thoughts and ideas and writing, like candles in little paper boats over dark water. With some of the stuff I have written, it’s like letting the universe peer into parts of my soul.

This is going to sound creepy, but I have found a way to peer back just a little.

I recently discovered that Blogger “keeps track of” the number of people who visit the blog. I don't think the statistics are accurate, and whenever I refresh it, I get crazy results, but it's something to grab onto nevertheless and harvest all the information I can out of it.

What I find particularly interesting is the distribution of viewers. Right now, the countries with the most views are the United States (big surprise there), Spain (didn’t see that one coming), and then Japan. I know at least one person who is currently in Japan, but she can’t account for all the traffic I’m getting from there. From the little I know of the Japanese, I think that they are so technologically-savvy and surf blogs all the time. Or someone really wants to learn English and I’m the lucky guinea pig.

The next places where I get the most views are from France and Luxembourg. That took me completely by surprise. So, to any readers or passersby in France and Luxembourg, I give you a gracious “thank-you,” and I want to dedicate this post to you.

I’m also getting readers from the UK, India, Russia, Thailand, Greece, Montenegro, South Africa, and Venezuela. I hope I didn’t scare you off - please keep reading, and keep on coming back!

I also get some traffic from places like Bolivia and Slovenia – however, I actually know who those people are. (Shout out to Tinker and Zil J.)

Mormon Blogs

I was taking a look at some other blogs earlier today to get a better sense of what some other people are saying. So that no equivocations may be made, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (popularly known in the media as "Mormons"). Mormon blogs have piqued my interest recently, and I became familiar with Brother Matsby's "My Religious Blog." It led me down the rabbit hole into a compendium of LDS blogs about children, marriage, and life at BYU (generally).

No comprehensive evaluation of the blog quality and content has been taken, but after one blog about how cute someone's kids are, I started to get bored. My dissociative personality order has arisen again: my nascent editor-self wanted to critique many of these blogs for craft and content. A few points about these people stood out to me, which I repeat below.

Someone thought everyone else appreciated her quality of "telling it like it is and appreciating [her] for it." Another person said she was a good driver, yet she had been in multiple accidents. A slightly more interesting blog critiques the U.S. government and says that his blog is the place where reason, rationality, and politics meet, but it makes swathing assumptions about people that would not be acceptable at a Californian liberal arts college and distorts the terms "common sense" and "reason."

This motions to the discrepancies between self-perception and how the self is perceived by others. Various ideas in my head are resounding about the spotlight effect and the individual's aggrandized view of self-importance, but I cannot critique more. I do the same thing myself. I want to resent these blogs because they're Mormons writing about themselves. Whether I don't like it because they're normal people trying to write about themselves, that they're not talking about religion, or that their writing gives Mormons a "bad intellectual name," I don't know. I want to distinguish myself from them; although Mormons have been officially encouraged to gain education by our Church leaders, an intellectual tradition still seems far from being realized. I feel that education is a means to an end for many Mormons - that end being a job. Sometimes, I feel that tug, too, to give up my intellectual pursuits and get a job because intellectual work is exhausting, and it's difficult to see sometimes what I am creating and producing.

However, I cannot remain in my caustic little bubble for long. I am touched by the endearing "list of things I will do" this year or throughout the course of my life; that reminds me of what my brother does, and what I have done as well. The irascible double-standard is encoded in my thought processes just as much as it is in anyone else's. I castigate the girl who's gotten into three car accidents while claiming still to be a good driver, but I accept the dreamer who wants to do a hundred improbable things before he dies. Perhaps because dreams are outside of the realm of the rational and go to the core of the individual's psyche. How can I judge the core of an individual? And despite our politics and intellects, dreams are something we all have in common.