The Woes of a Twenty-Somethings Blogger
Disclaimer (As Usual)
For those of you with real problems in your lives, and real difficulties, I must first offer my apologies. What follows next is not my sad attempt to evoke in you some pity because of any greatly saddening personal circumstances. While it is about the trials and tribulations of true transparency, I recognize these to be a trifle next to genuine tragedies and traumas. That said, I would like to offer a small, multi-paned window into both my soul and a world which I, admittedly, know very little about: blogging.
It’s Not As Easy As It Looks
Depending on the complex interplay of such factors as your computer savvy, verbal prowess, aesthetic sensibility, and personal taste and awareness of current happenings in fashion, pets, movies, travel, fad diets, politics, home decorating, the war on terror, cultural shifts, technological advances, religious battles, automobiles, professional ping-pong players, or whatever else it is that people blog about, those of you reading this may have vastly disparate reactions to the statement, “it’s not as easy as it looks.” You may be saying, “What is he talking about?! It’s so easy because I have my own blog that gets thousands of hits daily and is linked to by lots of other blogs and gets comments posted on it all the time!” Or maybe, “Easy?! Snort! The only reason I’m reading this blog entry right now is because my 9-year-old found it and printed it out for me!” Or even, “Does this guy ever get around to saying what he really wants to say?(!)” For the benefit of those typified by that last statement, I’ll go ahead and say what I set out to say.
Throughout the course of conceptualizing and creating and maintaining this blog, I have encountered a not-insignificant amount of internal tension as I struggled to “find my voice.” I have, in fact, written three entries that have not made it past the production-room floor. One of them actually made it onto the blog for a short while until I realized that I didn’t like the way I was representing myself and took it down. Is this about managing my image? No way, San Jose! Shouldn’t I just be transparent and real and authentic? Y-E-S spells you-bet-your-big-toe-that-I-should! But just because the tongue is free doesn’t mean the heart is. What I mean is that lying beneath the paragraphs of self-disclosure was bitterness, fear, shame, falseness, uncertainty, and maybe even a premature longing to prove myself. I’ve been yearning to express myself through a blog for some time now, but I needed to be expressing not only the real me but a me that has at least begun dealing with these deeper issues. At the end of this identity crisis (however minor or major it truly is, time will tell) I hope to find greater wholeness; and though part of life is also dealing with brokenness, I would like my writing to reflect a direction towards wholeness, since I have faith that, through Christ, I will not be forever broken.
Coming Soon: Real Substance!
The good news in all of this is that, amidst the woes of my recent past, I have found a term that describes the present time in my life and helps give meaning to the circumstances in which I find myself since November 1, 2005 (the day on which I began a period of voluntary unemployment): moratorium. Now, don’t go looking for dictionary.com to help you here – there’s a specialized usage of the term which I found yesterday in Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian by James W. Fowler (a great book, so far, by the way, and one of a few which I am currently reading) which basically fits my current circumstances to a T (tee? tea? ti?). All of this is to say, I’ll be blogging in the near future about a real event in my life, and that means I can make the shift from rambling about nothing to rambling about something! Yes, very, very exciting!! Check back soon because I hope to have this new post, about my moratorium, up within a week. (Yes, I know this last statement is highly optimistic and assumes that people are actually reading this blog – but for all you people who currently don’t know about it, HEY – things are about to get a little substantive in here! Yeah! Crazy, crazy times are afoot.)
For those of you with real problems in your lives, and real difficulties, I must first offer my apologies. What follows next is not my sad attempt to evoke in you some pity because of any greatly saddening personal circumstances. While it is about the trials and tribulations of true transparency, I recognize these to be a trifle next to genuine tragedies and traumas. That said, I would like to offer a small, multi-paned window into both my soul and a world which I, admittedly, know very little about: blogging.
It’s Not As Easy As It Looks
Depending on the complex interplay of such factors as your computer savvy, verbal prowess, aesthetic sensibility, and personal taste and awareness of current happenings in fashion, pets, movies, travel, fad diets, politics, home decorating, the war on terror, cultural shifts, technological advances, religious battles, automobiles, professional ping-pong players, or whatever else it is that people blog about, those of you reading this may have vastly disparate reactions to the statement, “it’s not as easy as it looks.” You may be saying, “What is he talking about?! It’s so easy because I have my own blog that gets thousands of hits daily and is linked to by lots of other blogs and gets comments posted on it all the time!” Or maybe, “Easy?! Snort! The only reason I’m reading this blog entry right now is because my 9-year-old found it and printed it out for me!” Or even, “Does this guy ever get around to saying what he really wants to say?(!)” For the benefit of those typified by that last statement, I’ll go ahead and say what I set out to say.
Throughout the course of conceptualizing and creating and maintaining this blog, I have encountered a not-insignificant amount of internal tension as I struggled to “find my voice.” I have, in fact, written three entries that have not made it past the production-room floor. One of them actually made it onto the blog for a short while until I realized that I didn’t like the way I was representing myself and took it down. Is this about managing my image? No way, San Jose! Shouldn’t I just be transparent and real and authentic? Y-E-S spells you-bet-your-big-toe-that-I-should! But just because the tongue is free doesn’t mean the heart is. What I mean is that lying beneath the paragraphs of self-disclosure was bitterness, fear, shame, falseness, uncertainty, and maybe even a premature longing to prove myself. I’ve been yearning to express myself through a blog for some time now, but I needed to be expressing not only the real me but a me that has at least begun dealing with these deeper issues. At the end of this identity crisis (however minor or major it truly is, time will tell) I hope to find greater wholeness; and though part of life is also dealing with brokenness, I would like my writing to reflect a direction towards wholeness, since I have faith that, through Christ, I will not be forever broken.
Coming Soon: Real Substance!
The good news in all of this is that, amidst the woes of my recent past, I have found a term that describes the present time in my life and helps give meaning to the circumstances in which I find myself since November 1, 2005 (the day on which I began a period of voluntary unemployment): moratorium. Now, don’t go looking for dictionary.com to help you here – there’s a specialized usage of the term which I found yesterday in Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian by James W. Fowler (a great book, so far, by the way, and one of a few which I am currently reading) which basically fits my current circumstances to a T (tee? tea? ti?). All of this is to say, I’ll be blogging in the near future about a real event in my life, and that means I can make the shift from rambling about nothing to rambling about something! Yes, very, very exciting!! Check back soon because I hope to have this new post, about my moratorium, up within a week. (Yes, I know this last statement is highly optimistic and assumes that people are actually reading this blog – but for all you people who currently don’t know about it, HEY – things are about to get a little substantive in here! Yeah! Crazy, crazy times are afoot.)
posted by joe.peebles at 12:36 PM
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