Works In Progress
People unrelated to me in any way (two of them who wrote me, and a few who traced back their referring page links) are reading this. Already. Yikes. The e-mails were mildly critical; not inflammatory, but not terribly constructive either. That's fine. I can handle criticism, having received so much of it over the years. As long as my writing can eventually please four or five people while it pisses off the rest of the planet I'll be happy.

When I kicked this thing off, I didn't think I needed to write at any length about why I'm doing it and what I'm trying to accomplish in the process. I know it will take some time to develop the focus, the rhythm, the "brand identity" of this place. I've been reading online journals for a while, and want to incorporate some of the best of what I like to read into my own efforts. Very few of those blogs (some of which I link to in my nascent blogroll) give any clues as to their evolution. Surely, their authors went through a trial and error phase, and made some early regrettable posts that lacked depth or insight. Eventually, as their readership climbed into the double digits and beyond real-life acquaintances, I'm convinced they either edited that stuff out or bounced to another web domain, a new home without any junk in the attic. I'm not easily fooled. Nobody's that perfect, are they?

I did that myself, sort of. The first Superelastic Iconoclastic still lives on Blogspot, but there really isn't much there. In the month or so I spent scribing over there, I spent more time editing HTML (something I haven't the faintest of clues about) than I did publishing. Then life intervened (one of my closest friends went through a very troubled time), and the weblog died on the vine. As did a lot of other things. I have some codependency issues, lovely remnants of a dysfunctional marriage fraught with crisis, and the event triggered some responses from me I'd thought I'd beaten. I gave too much of myself to another (again), which eventually strained the friendship and didn't really fix anything, leaving me all alone to sort out a lot of mixed emotions.

Eventually I realized that if I had blogged those things while they were happening, they might have made a helluva read. Then again, they might not have done. There are members of my own flesh-and-blood family who could give a shit about my mundane life, so the odds of making it sound compelling online seem quite challenging. Moreover, in real life, I'm somewhat private and aloof (mainly because I've grown tired of seeking validation from, and being vulnerable to, people who are absolutely wrong for me). Why the hell would I shove things I wouldn't talk about (or possibly even acknowledge) with people face-to-face onto a public wire?

When I fired up this reincarnated weblog last week, I was content to randomly comment on whatever caught my eye, or whatever I found myself doing, just like 1,749,560 other bloggers do. And I presume I can do that at least as well as any of them. I like to write, and this is an attempt at creative expression for public consumption. I'm not trying to be "discovered" with this thing, nor trying to make any money at it. If anything, the act of making these words public is the most rewarding part of blogging. To avoid being shallow or hypocritical in front of strangers, you have to be sharp enough to convey how you define yourself in the world. That's another reason why I'm doing this, because in real life I've come to find I have no real definition. I just sort of exist. I rationally, logically withdrew from life after my divorce and set about getting a grip on myself, a process I had no real wish to inflict on others (see private and aloof above). I have no fear of being alone (in some ways I welcome it), but I'm not a loner.

Yet I've become one, and that has unpleasant connotations for me. I imagine blogging will force me to somehow set the course for the second half of my life, simply because in order to have an interesting blog I have to get out and experience new and interesting things. I have to interact with the world around me and formulate some consistent perceptions about it. And I see that as a positive, esteem-affirming thing for which blogging is perfect... anonymous enough to avoid social awkwardness, yet not quite doomed to "send(ing) it off in a letter to yourself," as Donald Fagen once sang. (To reprise, people reading- already- yikes).

Inspiration for the focus I'd like to take here came when I least expected it. Late last night, suffering from a bit of insomnia, I pressed the random search button on the Bostonites webring, which I've joined myself. Thus I came across Watch What Happens, an introspection by a North Shore musician/designer, and I found it engaging. Before I knew it, I spent a couple of hours reading through her whole archive. What does she write about? Herself, her band, her pets, her friends, the fickle nature of the dating scene, restaurants and books she likes. She weighs in on larger issues when they tempt her, but for the most part it's all about her. Ho-hum, just like those 1,749,560 others, right? Well, not quite. She's smart, a deep thinker and an excellent writer... and those attributes alone put her blog into the upper classes. But what I like best about it is this... in her essays, she dumps a lot of intensely personal thoughts out onto the page, without hiding behind a pseudonym and without couching her thoughts in false modesty. So much so, those self-essays somehow transcend the mundane and become things we all (if we're not self-deluded) can identify within ourselves. It conveys reality in a sense a lot of us bloggers could only hope to do.

And I've decided I'd like to try that here, releasing a few inhibitions about doing so in the process. I'll tell myself often it's not self-absorption, it's following some of the best advice given to writers... write from the heart, write about what you know. That doesn't mean I'll stop writing about county fairs or funny John Kerry photos, about my traffic violations, articles that I think are interesting, or any of that stuff. I paid for the webspace and I'll fill it as I wish. But I won't be shy (or, more accurately, I'll be less shy) about writing from the gut as well. It'll be some of the hardest writing I've ever done, but if there's a way to turn this stock-vanilla Radio webpage into something that's uniquely mine, I don't see any other way. It'll help the weblog, it'll help me. We're both works in progress. 3:02:23 PM    comment []trackback []