fling93 loves fishies

Do You Want to Feel My Pain (such as it is)?

I originally started this blog to share my thoughts with the world, partially in the hopes of influencing it, but mostly because I figured my thoughts were interesting enough to be worth sharing. Over time, I realized it was also a handy way to organize my thoughts and ideas. And since I have a tendency to try and research things before I post them (so that I don’t ever embarrass myself), it’s also served as a useful tool to help remind me to not jump to conclusions.

I’d decided to refrain from posting too many personal snippets of my life (indeed, as I look back, it seems this blog has been getting less personal over time) because I figured the main reason some people hate blogs is because a lot of them are little more than self-indulgent personal diaries (and yes, many done by teenage girls), which opens the medium up to the derision and dismissal from mainstream traditional media, as I previously discussed. And I also figured most of my readers probably couldn’t care less what goes on in my life, since (as you might have noticed from my blogroll) I really don’t read any personal blogs myself except from people I’ve personally met. And I figured my life is currently a picture of domestic tranquility most of the time, which’d bore most of you to death.

However, I’m beginning to reconsider this decision after reading an absolutely heart wrenching post by getupgrrl at Chez Miscarriage (just go read the whole thing), and Allison Kaplan’s reaction to it:

Well, maybe we can’t imagine the pain, but we certainly can understand it better and be more sensitive to it when we read blogs like Chez Miscarriage. Which is why I continue to contend that the very best blogs aren’t the ones spouting political opinions regarding the news of the day 24/7; they are the ones that help us really get a feel for what it is like to be someone else, living a different life and opening ourselves to their experience.

I know that it sounds totally corny, but the best blogs are the ones that make us better people.

Post found via Laura of 11D (at her new digs), whom I found via Brayden King.

And she’s got a good point. The Internet and the blogosphere is all about connecting us all closer together, and while I’d been focusing on the sharing of ideas, a huge piece of that is also helping us know what it’s like to experience things we’ve never experienced.

Certainly, I’ve never experienced the kind of pain that getupgrrl is going through, but we’re all human, and for some reason it seems like pain is an integral part of being human. I am no exception. And so sharing our own unique experiences of it might help us eventually understand why there’s always so much pain. And similarly for other, more positive life experiences, even the more mundane ones.

But I don’t know. Every blog is different, and different blogs fill different roles and niches. So I don’t know whether this is something you, my readers, would be interested in. I believe I’ve developed a regular readership based on my stats (or maybe not, maybe it’s all because Google has been inordinately kind to me, and nobody ever comes here twice). However, I don’t really get very much feedback from all of you, so I don’t really know who you are, and what you like or don’t like. I’m guessing that a big reason is that most of my posts tend to be essays that aren’t very conversational, and perhaps you all believe I don’t care what you think. But that’s just not it at all. I’m just trying to write what you’d all like to read, and so I’ve modeled my writing after that I see in magazines and such. I do like to hear lots of opinions and voices, and while I’ve currently been doing this by subscribing to a whole bunch of other blogs via RSS, I realized I’m leaving a source right here untapped. Because a blog is not a magazine. This can be and should be a two-way street.

So let me try and open this up a little bit with a question. Would you, my <Gollum-voice> precious </Gollum-voice> readers be interested to see this place evolve into a little more of a personal blog? The essays will continue, but I might interject what’s going on in my life from time to time (and with juuuuuuust a bit more detail than I did here or here). I used to fancy myself becoming a novelist someday, so I’d probably use a narrative style (sorta like my bidet post, only a little less cheeky). I’d really like to know. It’s okay to say you’d prefer not to read about my life. I can always do it on a separate blog.

And just to incentivize a bit, I have some Gmail invites to give away (some of which I plan to donate to GMAIL 4 Troops). So if you want one, respond in the comments or via e-mail (I’m fling93, and I have both a Yahoo! and Gmail address, so you can figure it out), being sure to let me know if you want an invite and also telling me in which direction you’d prefer this blog to go.

Update 12/3/04

As I mentioned elsewhere, I’ve decided instead to make use of my LiveJournal account for posts about my personal life. I figure most of my readers don’t know me and don’t care to know me, and those that do can just follow me there. Plus, it keeps personal crap away from the Google spiderbot, which is less annoying to websearchers and provides me a little more privacy. As you might expect, it will be a lot less edited and researched than most of the posts here. And hopefully more spontaneous as well. But if you’re interested in learning more about me and following my life, or if you know me in person, go check out my LiveJournal.