Blogs are...

Many blogs, including mine, have become less frequent even though they all have the good intent to provide creative writing and insight. I often wonder as I read blogs if others are also in the same mindset as I. With the instant gratification of Facebook, we get little bits and pieces about life and have fewer reasons (or time) to sit and write about our training, races, or life in general. We never get the whole, only parts.

My friend Steve has struggled with training but always has things to share.  I envy that ability.  At times, the varied insights he offers are things I know nothing about, but I still enjoy the thoughts (most of the time).

I miss my regular blog posting!  Even if they are not read, they have a soothing effect on my mind.  Putting thoughts into words is a skill and allows time to sort out life's complexities.  Sometimes, I look at my blog as the bartender of a post-blog era.  I used to be in a position where people would come into the bar, purchase a good, strong drink, sit at it, and spill their guts.  I would pretend to listen and occasionally say, “I understand” or “You sure,” just so they thought I was listening.  Ended with a great tip!  Did I really care?  Not really, but they vented, shared, and sorted through the issues they may face daily. 

There was one instance where I met a stranger at the YMCA in Fargo who approached me and said, “Did you use to work at the Doublewood Inn”?  I said I still did.  He said, “Thank you”!  I was dumbfounded as I never met the guy, so I thought.  He said he was fired from his job and was not looking forward to going home, so he stopped by and got “hammered.”

I apologized for not knowing.  He stated I listened to him for hours before telling him he had two choices, keep drinking and have no life, or wake up and realize his life is what he makes of it.  (I do not recall saying this to anyone, but he was sure it was me, and I worked there…

That was one of many rewarding times in my life.  I think about how life has changed.  No longer are bartenders, free psychologists.  There are few places to express oneself semi-anonymously.  So we blog, or at least I do.

The word blog is a conflation of two words: web and log. Its four letters contain a concise and accurate self-description: it is a log of thoughts and writing posted publicly on the World Wide Web. In the monosyllabic vernacular of the Internet, We blog soon became the word blog.

This form of instant and global self-publishing, made possible by technology widely available only for the past decade or so, allows for no retroactive editing (apart from fixing minor typos or small glitches) and removes from the act of writing any considered or lengthy review. It is the spontaneous expression of instant thought—impermanent beyond even the ephemera of daily journalism. It is accountable to readers and other bloggers in immediate and unavoidable ways and linked via hypertext to continuously multiply references and sources. Unlike any single piece of print journalism, its borders are extremely porous, and its truth is inherently transitory. The consequences of this for the act of writing are still sinking in.

Anyone who has blogged his thoughts for an extended time will recognize this world. We bloggers have scant opportunity to collect our thoughts, to wait until events have settled and a clear pattern emerges. We blog now—as news reaches us, as facts emerge.

We write about ourselves at a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world.  In this sense, the historical form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference, a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, dedication to marking life as it happens, and remembering life as it was make it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, just as correspondence could be—but usually posthumously or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective form into a painfully public and immediate one. It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed to before.

It's time to call it a night. I did see Bye Bye Birdie at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater tonight. It was a solid production at a great theater. I hope you all are prepared for the forecast of a blizzard in the next 36 hours. It's been a while since a real classic blizzard.

Carry on my friends…  Carry on…