This blog, this presentation of one or a few aspects of me, this particular perspective, feels broken to me, and I feel my best approach is to let it wither and start a new one. I haven't yet, but I will when the muse wallops me, and I'll reference the address here. Probably it will be on WordPress, finally, cause that's where some of the kool kids go and it has a feature or two.
What's broken? My tone is no longer entirely genuine. I noticed this by examining a few word choices that stuck with me as mildly dismissive. Recently I said something about "retired strippers and prostitutes" which at the time I meant as an amusing tie-in between my present social life and the sophomoric fantasy life of the frustrated early-middle-age family man I used to be but which in hindsight looks sort of disrespectful towards some people I am in fact very fond of and respect very highly. A little earlier (here and here) I alluded to my partner's adventuresome ways in ways that, again in hindsight, seem slightly disrespectful. Whether or not anyone else ever saw it that way, or ever would (I just don't know), I want to own it, and make changes to fix it. (Or make fixes to change it. Darn this flexibly imprecise human language.)
Here's what I think has been happening here. My life, and me within it, are changing, and changing rapidly. But I'm not entirely comfortable with it, and sometimes use blogspace to take refuge in a familiar-seeming, former-seeming outlook and sort of describe my life from there, as if to say, yeah, here's my zoo. It's a little bit condescending, I think, hence not genuine, not thoroughly respectful, not what I want permanently etched in words. I need to accept and write from that, and not semisubconsciously try and provide translations. And if I really do have a more evolved outlook (relative to myself, anyway), it feels cleaner to cut ties to this old record (dates back to five years before yesterday and a lot of water has been passed under the bridge), and do what I've sort of been thinking to do and just been to not-blog-focused to do, and start anew.
Soon enough. We'll see. I don't really like being on a computer too much of an evening.
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2 comments:
You don't intend to appear condescending? Or you don't intend to appear condescending? Or is it even condescending?
Me, I think it genuinely reflects you and the voice I hear in your words is not one of condescension but of a sort of childish wonder that someone like you could have something so amazing as this, a little need to show off (lookit! someone like me has something so amazing as this!) and all that. IOW, that you don't value yourself very highly (still) and still can't get over the wonder of it all.
The blog is totally you, as I see you.
But maybe you're no longer that person and you're no longer awestruck by the fabulousness of the relationship you have and the lifestyle you've chosen?
I'm in my thirteenth year doing Language Barrier at Blogspot so definitely, on re-read, many posts make me cringe. And, over the years, I've also thought about wrapping it up and switching to wordpress. In fact, I have had two, or is it three, blogs on wp for several years now but have never done much with any of them. For one thing, the wp free templates suck. If I'm going to start paying for a url again, I'd probably resurrect my old website, ashabot.com. But mostly I've been tempted by the wordpress promise of 10 gazillion instafans. But, if it were fans I'm after, I'd have quit blogging long ago. About three people read my blog and only one comments with any regularity. (Thanks, Roy. ;) What's happened is Language Barrier has become a standing record of my life and the lives of people with whom I share the road, my family and friends and the people I meet along the way. I often refer to it when I need to know where I was, who I was with, what I did or was thinking. It is also a record of my (hopefully) evolving thought and point of view. I, at least, like to think I've changed and grown over the years. These days, I value that record. I don't want to toss it or bury it in the backyard. The way I see it, start over too many times and I'd lose that root. But who knows? Maybe killing In A Perfect World is exactly right for you.
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