We're All Humans, Aren't We?

An interesting question has been circulating around Xanga lately, thanks to Gen:
Why do we blog? I’ve been reading the various answers that have been
given. They’ve run a gamut of reasons, ranging from a quick way to keep
family and friends updated to a personal online diary. Looking back
through my older Xanga entries, I realized that I really started
blogging seriously on Xanga in January, close to a year ago, in an
effort to keep in touch with some new friends that I had made over a
trip to Jamaica over Trinity’s interim. Since then, my blogging has
evolved from that original purpose into an outlet where I can free
associate in public while sharing myself to anyone who wants to read my
entries.

I love philosophy, psychology, science, technology, religion, theology.
Rarely do I come across a topic that doesn’t interest me. Xanga allows
me a wonderful outlet to muse on these topics as well as my life and
the struggles and victories I am currently experiencing. Xanga is the
closest thing I’ve come to having a diary. Very rarely have I written
an entry that I found too personal that I categorized as protected or
private. My entries have ranged from the superficial, such as
advertising then brand-new Firefox browser and a Xanga contest sponsored by Big Red; to silly things I found on the Internet and thought other people would get a giggle out of, like this entry about an unfortunate toy; to surveys that
I thought would be a fun way for people who read my Xanga to learn a
little bit about me; to entries where I would just simply use Xanga as
a diary and reiterate what happened to me, like this entry on my weekend or my three-parter (1, 2, 3) on how I got two tickets and had to go to court twice or quickly mention days that were important to me.

Sometimes I would just free associate and quickly muse on random things like watching someone sleep, conversations, family difficulties, movie reviews or three hours of playing Apples to Apples. I would also list Bible verses or song lyrics
that meant something to me at that time. If I had written something
that I was proud of and wanted to share, I would put it in Xanga, like
this poem
I wrote for my girlfriend. Sometimes I didn’t even need to use words.
Thanks to the internet, I would use photos for a blog entry, like this one about my South Dakota trip.

Other times, however, like everyone on this planet, I would be
struggling with deep or painful issues. They say that writing is the
cheapest form of therapy and I would be inclined to agree. Sometimes it
helps to write things out, feelings, thoughts, emotions, hopes, dreams,
anger, disappointment so you have it physically out and you can look at
it, rather than have whatever you’re experiencing be this fleeting,
arbitrary thing inside your head or heart where you can’t see it. There
were times when I went through major thinking and struggles and I wrote
it on Xanga. Oftentimes, those entries turned out to be long, but I
almost always felt satisfied, feeling like I had finally poured it out
instead of leaving it bottled inside. For example, I wrote about my struggles with my old job, how life changes, my identity, my 25th birthday, and my future.

I love being able to look back, as I’ve been doing in my research for
writing this entry, and seeing how far (or not-so-far) I’ve come since
I started writing in Xanga. That’s another reason why I blog: to track
my personal development. A year is nothing right now, but in five years
or so when I wade through my older entries, I will be able to say,
“Wow! Look where I came from!” I’ve always been a firm believer of
Socrates’ maxim: The unexamined life is not worth living. If we don’t
look inside ourselves and track our development and growth in the past,
then how can we understand and look forward to where we’re going?

I don’t blog for others, but I love being able to share myself and my
thoughts and opinions and ideas freely to anyone who wants to read
them. Being open to the world and receiving input on what you’ve
written is something that I love. The instant feedback that blogging
allows allows me to re-read and re-evaluate what I’ve written in a
different light. That is never a bad thing. It pushes me to change and
grow, rather than stay stagnant.

During my blogging, my subscriptions list grew from a tiny group of
students at Trinity that I wanted to know more about to friends that I
have known for a while and new people that came into my life in the
course of a year. My subscriptions list is almost a year old and,
unlike some people who have it in an alphabetical order, I have it
organized in a list when I first subscribed to them. I can look back
and see how and when I added people as the year went on. There is
virtually no one that I don’t know on my list. I do not have any
strangers that I’ve not met in person. So, all the people on my list
are the ones that I know and willingly solicit ideas, opinions, advice,
and chastisement from.

So, why do I blog? So I can get to know others, yes; so I have an
outlet to share myself and my thoughts, opinions, ideas, and writings,
yes; but primarily…

I blog so I can get to know myself.