Confession:
I’ve never thought of myself as a blogger.
Many of you know my aversion to the word “blog,” my aversion to the false sense of immediacy created by that publish button, my desire for us all to reflect on language that has lasted and for us to spend less time spent gobbling up whatever was “so ten seconds ago.” To read the old books, for crying out loud.
I really couldn’t care less about writing on an open blog as an idea or as a vocation. To open my blog was neither my form nor my calling.
However, I do care deeply about the conversations that follow any given open blog post, the reaction to anything I put into public, whether in person or in email or in letters or even in the comments. I also care more about the study that leads up to an open blog post rather than the post itself.
I’d also be lying if I said that the LinkedIn crowd endorsed any one skill of mine more than this open blog — this practicing in public.
And now that I’m reflecting on it, I also think I’ve hosted over a dozen blogs, some open blogs that were public and some closed blogs that were private, since 2005 even though all but three of them are no longer public. I did MySpace and Facebook notes, the Xanga thing, all of that. Because of those experiences and growing up with AOL and ICQ and email, I just assume most people know how to blog.
Yet people who keep asking me about setting up a blog. Like I said, I like having blogged because of the conversation and emails that follow. I also like having blogged because blogging forces me to write in a mode holistically different from my normal work. I typically call them articles and refuse to call it “content” and favor “substance” because substance is what constitutes the character of a great man and content is what General Mills puts in shitty cereal.
But the actual process of blogging sends me through a freaking gauntlet every time. As my name’s Lancelot, I find this fitting. Assuming, of course, that I come out the other side of this gauntlet unscathed. People, for whatever reason, keep telling me that this rather grueling experience of mine is helpful for their own personal pursuits.
I’m reminded of Kierkegaard:
What is a poet? An unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his head, but whose lips are so fashioned that when sighs and groans pass over them they sound like beautiful music. His fate resembles that of the unhappy men who were slowly roasted by a gentle fire in the tyrant Phalaris’ golden bull–their shrieks could not reach his ear to terrify him, to him they sounded like sweet music. And people flock around the poet and say to him: do sing again.
Which means, “Would that new sufferings torment your soul and would that your lips stay fashioned as before, for your cries would only terrify us, but your music is delightful.”
And the critics join them, saying, “Well done, thus must it be according to the laws of aesthetics.” Why, to be sure, a critic resembles a poet as one pea another, the only difference being that he has no anguish in his heart and no music on his lips. Behold, therefore would I rather be a swineherd on Amager and be understood by swine, than a poet and misunderstood by men.
Since my blog has been mostly poetry over the years, you can understand the connection, pain to pain.
But if this blog’s helpful or beautiful to a few, I’ll sing on. For me, the beauty’s in the smiles I see that immediately follow my own slow roasting (or baking, as Cookie Monster would have it).
The beauty’s in the questions wonderful people ask. The beauty’s in the email replies I get – even though I take forever to respond because of backlog combined with my desire to answer more fully than in one-word responses. Your encouragement and stories and journeys are the real prize.
So let’s do a little series of short posts on why you probably shouldn’t blog. And if you insist on opening your blog, this series will expose everything you should first consider. Questions welcome.
Heck, questions provoked. Bring it on.
We’ll break each section up into three parts: (1) blogs in general, (2) your open blog in particular, (3) specifically that blog post you’re about to publish. I’ll create a table of contents below and link to the posts as they come.
Before You Open Blog:
Comment early, comment often, keep it civil: