My long-time-missing comment friend who goes by the anonymous name of Billy has come back. I am so pleased! He also managed to make me laugh out loud this morning, which, with the rest of the household asleep (lazy lot) takes some doing.
You'll have to go see his comment on the quiz two posts below.
Yes, Billy you are so right, the design of those quizzes and possibly most of this blog and in fact probably most blogs everywhere are all about self obsession, of course they are!
This is the grey world between the real one where things get done and a private diary, the ultimate tool for self analysis, home grown psychiatry, 'writing it out', because there's even feedback. Its not feedback from people who see you in your everyday mess, or people with preconceptions of your strengths or glaring weaknesses, if anything the nearest comparison is getting an English essay marked by one of those teachers who has no desire whatsoever to know how the students live outside of school, or even get their names right.
Its completely honest, straightforward and sometimes delightfully true and useful.
Yes, Billy, they should have included a mark for self-obsession, and at least in this public landscape of private thoughts I do admit that when blogging, 97% is probably a very fair guess at my score.
Touche!
There are lots of awful things going on in the world, the most recently devastating being the Indonesian earthquake and as a new blogger I was often political, often spouting about this or that injustice. The thing is, where did I get the news from? From the web, from the TV, sometimes from other blogs. To be honest when others pass a strong opinion then its easy for me to throw my hat into the ring and say whether I agree, or disagree completely.
However, for me to announce these things as news is to assume that my (now fairly fixed) group of readers are missing vital information or worse, are indifferent and in need of correction. I prefer not to live on a soap box, putting myself and my opinions above others.
That wouldn't be self obsessed so much as totally self-centred and self-involved because at its core is a conviction that the writer is right and everyone else is irrelevant or at least stupid. In the end, on here, I guess we all dissect ourselves in preference to doing it to anybody else. After all it's only a blog, its not some elevated newspaper or documentary, nor a historical record of the ultimate truth.
Do you know the most wonderful thing about blogging?
Sometimes I put all these thoughts about how life is (or isn't going) for me, and in the writing, they take shape. Sometimes I only manage to summarise them and 'get my head straight' whilst I write. I never start a post in Word or plan a subject, I always just open the blogger 'create;' field and see what happens. That way its all honest and fresh and any corrections are to do with how the thoughts sound, dressed in particular words, which in my case means reading over and backtracking to get rid of duplication and to put the same point in less angular terms, often changing one single word here or there.
By the end of many self-analytical posts I manage (I hope), to draw fairly sensible conclusions about giving up with the moaning and getting on with getting on. I draw my own path out of the mire, and the most wonderful thing that can happen is for someone to pass by, read, and then say that my words drew a path from them too, out of a similar mess.
The funny thing about that is that they probably only failed to see the route themselves because they are not as self obsessed as I am. It takes a huge dose of self obsession to learn to dig deep and unravel your own knots and I value and learn from the others I've found with that skill.
Of course the funniest thing of all is that the act (at my age) of completing one of the memes and quizzes of the kind that prompted your comment is the fallback tool of someone with nothing to say at all - we find them whilst surfing other blogs in a failed attempt to draw inspiration. Rattling through a few tick boxes just to have something, anything to fill a gap is actually the antithesis of that.
Its not the quiz that's self-obsessed, its the whole rest of my blog. This is my small, semi-secret self-obsession corner. My 'me' time. ;-)
6 comments:
Blimey, you must type quickly! I didn't expect seven hundred and eighty-two words in (such swift) reply to my belated throwaway comment, but thank you very much, and it's very gratifying to know I can raise a laugh at such an early hour. Have a nice day.
The Anonymous "Billy".
PS. Sorry for the repetition, but I had to insert a missing 'k' in 'thank'. These things are very important to me.
PPS. What does 'ROFL' mean? Rolling on floor laughing??
See how wonderful I am, I have deleted (not permanently, ruins the count, hehe) the comment which offended your eyes / sensibilities, even though there's at least one missing S in my post and probably half a dozen apostrophes. More of my own errors will turn up in time I am sure.
Yes ROFL means rolling on the floor laughing. I like it and use it too much, but it does seem to describe the actual sensation of delight and hurt ribs and even, I guess, that complete sensation of every muscle tightening and locking from toes to top of your head as they do if something is erm, delightful - the only state one could be in to actually fall over. There isn't a 'real' word that covers that in one swoop and few suitable to a paragraph.
What an excellent analysis Cheryl. Thank you.
All points well taken, but I have to admit, had I received a comment regarding my high level of self-absorption, I might have cried. You Brits have such twisted senses of humor :-)
What else is a blog for?! :-)
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