Friday, February 8, 2013

Blogs are...


The blog posts for many blogs, including mine, have become less frequent even though there is good intent by all 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 we have fewer reasons (or time) to sit and write about our training, races, or life in general.  We never get the whole, only parts.

I know my friend Steve has struggled with training, but he never runs out of 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 the complexities of life, if that is possible.  At times, I look at my blog as the bartender of a post blog era.  I used to be in a position where people would come in to the bar, purchase a good strong drink and sit at the bar and spill their guts.  I would pretend to listen and occasionally say the words “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 each day. 
There was one instance where I met a complete stranger at the YMCA in Fargo who came up to 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 has two choices, keep drinking and have no life or wake up and realize his life is what he makes of it.  (I really do not recall saying this to anyone, but he was sure it was me and I did work 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. It contains in its four letters 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, Web log 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 in immediate and unavoidable ways to readers and other bloggers, and linked via hypertext to continuously multiplying references and sources. Unlike any single piece of print journalism, its borders are extremely porous and its truth 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 end up writing about ourselves, in a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world.  In this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, 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 of forms 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 before.

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.  Been a while since a real classic blizzard.