Sharing Does Not Necessarily Denote Caring

Talking to Allison about blogging really helped distill some ideas I’ve been kicking around for a while. I was talking about how the whole concept of online journals has done for marginalized voices what, long ago, the ability to self-publish pamphlets/chapbooks/zines did. And how I’ve been doing this for an entire decade, and how my attitudes toward what and how to write have changed dramatically.

When I first began to write about myself and my life online, I really pulled no punches. I’d talk about personal things in a non-anonymous way (I’ve always used my full, actual name). I’d discuss my social and familial circle in a natural manner; the way I’d talk to a close friend. Stopping only at revealing confidences, my posts contained all of the drama and conflict that my real life did. And as a teenager with an objectively dramatic life, the subjective voice was even more compelling to people who didn’t know me, and even more horripilating to those who did. “How dare you,” I can summarize both groups as saying, one admiringly and the other with the full wroth entitled to those whose laundry was being translated to public domain. A recent NYTimes article dealing with the consequences of ‘oversharing’ produced a nostalgic chuckle in yours truly, as I read about an adult woman whose outrage at her boyfriend’s feelings of betrayal as she recounted their daily doings online are nothing if not the same interpersonal clashes I’d experienced as a 15-year-old.

“Grow up and rethink your style,” I yawned with all the jaded perspective due her relative e-grandmother.

Back to this conversation with Allison, though: as I recounted this article and we tossed back and forth the points of view of Angry at Being Censored by Her Boyfriend Lady, and Angry at Being Revealed Against His Will Guy, I found myself stuck at an old impasse: should I stick to my once-bitten guns, and remain a person who keeps almost entirely mum with regard to her everyday life? Or should I follow the example of these chronic oversharers (and experience my old friend, self-satisfied, indignant notoriety!)?

The more we tossed these opposing styles around, the more torn I felt. We talked about the reality of one’s audience; of being a performer whose ‘inner’ is their ‘outer’. About the idea of frequent site visitors and the performance anxiety I sometimes experience when contemplating why people visit my site, and what I should write to make them stay. “It’s like you’re thirteen and dating for the first time,” Allison said while trying not to laugh at me. “Why do you like me?” she wailed in mimicry of this inner kid, all a-tumult over romantic stresses. “It IS romantic stress,” I interjected. “Any performer has a romantic relationship with their audience. You woo, you charm, you gauge reactions and play up your best-liked qualities; your best material. You seduce.” She readily agreed with me… as an artist, she’s naturally familiar with the difficulty of perceiving selling one’s work as selling oneself, &c &c. The concept of attracting and repelling some nebulous concept of an audience isn’t remotely unfamiliar to anyone in a creative field, whether or not they’re on an actual stage. And the allure of that stage is powerful. Just watch the Simpsons season finale where Lisa’s addicted to getting laughs and climbs over anyone in her way to keep ‘em coming.

So I want to keep ‘em coming, too. And I asked about this whole idea, vis a vis Is it disingenuous to write only when I feel I’ve got some pearl to impart on the people who I assume must like me because they keep coming back here. We concluded that I shouldn’t worry myself so much over this issue. “But what if people only like one out of every twenty things I write?” I asked. “What if they only like one out of every hundred?” she replied. “So what?” “So,” I continued, “I want to feel proud of what I post on my site. And if I lose regular visitors, or get negative feedback, it just won’t be as good as feeling proud at positive feedback.” Allison pointed out the obvious: “You can’t have one without the other, so just get more Buddhist about it.” Explain. “It’s okay to experience those emotions, but don’t let them have lasting impact.”

In terms of my own impact on others, I still don’t think I’m going to regress ten years and choose the sucker’s route of blog-as-reality-tv. I’d like to think my audience, whomever it’s comprised of, is above that kind of cheap thrill. (There are plenty of livejournals for that, after all.) But I may just start writing more for writing’s sake than for posterity.

It is, after all, just a blog. Right?

Do you know who you are

oh you forever listed
under some other heading
when you are listed at all

you whose addresses
when you have them
are never sold except
for another reason
something else that is
supposed to identify you

who carry no card
stating that you are—
what would it say you were
to someone turning it over
looking perhaps for
a date or for
anything to go by

you with no secret handshake
no proof of membership
no way to prove such a thing
even to yourselves

you without a word
of explanation
and only yourselves
as evidence

      — To the Happy Few, by W.S. Merwin