Closed Blogging: Why Bother?

A couple of years ago I closed off a former blog.  I had written so much pain and rage and frustration into that one and I couldn't see a way of rehabilitating it.  But I couldn't just delete it, either.  It's still there; I am the only person who can read it.  Sometimes that will happen to a blog I used to casually read; I'll go there and the writer has shut that valve, sometimes forever.

Blogs are funny things; they are journals for most of us who write them, ways of communicating with the self.  As I type, I don't usually plan out what I'm going to say, and often I just have an undefined something that I need to think about.  But they are public, and there is an illusion of privacy being breached.  I suppose that illusion can be pretty convincing sometimes.

I don't actually have any IRL*  who write blogs the way I do.  I know some online folks who write, but most people guard their secrets their privacy pretty carefully.   Which I respect, but it's amazing to me those folks who write all those details, their lives, their disappointments and personal issues.  I respect both types of folks-- those who write it all out, sharing the warts & all, and those who keep their privacy as close as they can.

I love that my friends and family can keep up with at least a little bit of what I'm thinking through this medium; I wish that I could, in turn, keep up with some of them, as well, in a similar fashion.  Since I don't know very many people who blog, for realz, the blogs I do read are folks who I "met online".  I love to read a story about their day, see a cool photo, step a minute out of my own head.

Lately, talking on the phone seems so invasive, so hard to do right.  I can't unsay something on the phone, highlight a phrase that didn't come out right and retype it better, so it's less painful, nicer. So I don't give away too much.  So that I do it right.  I find myself, with some people in phone conversations, not doing it right.  Screwing it up.  Wishing I could start over.

But I am also well aware that reading a blog entry does not mean I know anything about this person in more ways than superficially.  I know what they are writing, what they are telling me, but I don't know everything.  It's a kind of connection, and sometimes I have felt I know someone better through the blog world than I do some people in that "real life" that I speak to every day.  Just as when I write a blog, I don't say things that I don't feel like sharing.  What I share is honestly far more superficial than people realize, I guess.  It seems like there is nothing I won't write.  I've written about physical pain, emotional pain, love, life, hate, rage, disappointment.

I write things when I am trying to figure them out.  Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't.  I wish I could give this gift to others, the ability to share this or that detail but not too much.  Maybe it's kind of a form of meditative practice; trying to know myself well enough to make the things that are selfish or greedy or wrong over into something better.  It's like my Tarot card readings.  I don't pretend to KNOW through magic or con-artistry what the cards REALLY mean; I just lay them down, tell you what the traditional symbolism would be and let you figure it out for yourself.  What do you THINK the giant head with the body of a cricket from your dream really means?  Your interpretation there is more important than my own.

I want to reach out, to take you by the hand, to give some kind of comfort from grief when that is needed, some joy when that is the thing that is called for.  Something good.  Pull out the good crystal goblets and expensive champagne and chocolates and share joy.   

Sometimes, when I blog, I can do that and more.

But what I have here today is a winter blue sky, windy, isolated clouds that imagination cannot shape into anything other than cold cloud, and trees that are mostly bare and shadows playing on my neighbor's roof.