xeryfyn's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Blogging I've been thinking about this process of blogging for a couple of days. I guess that I originally started thinking about it when I realized that not many people update their blogs as often as they did when they began writing. And, while this is a fairly common occurance in online diary communities, I thought perhaps that the close knit quality of our friends would prompt more frequency. Alas, this isnt the case, Sarah mentioned that this isnt the first place that she thinks of bringing her thoughts to anymore, and as Gwyn mentioned, it feels odd to only read about one another's lives despite not having enough time to actually fit real time into one another's schedules. And that, combined with the desire to do quality writing when writing on such a public forum, well, I guess it can be more daunting than it originally started out being. Then again, perhaps that wasn't my intention of keeping a diary at all. I was also prompted to think more about the reasons behind keeping an online diary when one of the friends and readers I had made in my original online diary community (Open Diary) switched over to this one in order to keep in better touch. This amazes me, not just because she is someone with whom I have never had a real time conversation with nor have ever had the pleasure of seeing (pictures or otherwise), but simply because of the depth of her commitment to keeping this "relationship" alive. I began keeping a diary way back in 2000 when I moved from Edmonton to Prince George. There, far away from family, friends and everything familiar, I sought solace and friendship through my writing. I assuaged my loneliness through the friendly people I met keeping on line diary and I began to chronicle all the daily things that happened and to explore the rough and tumble of things hat filled my days. I had lots of time for introspection, for "deep thoughts", for dreaming, for keeping track of who I was and who I was becoming. I helped someone through a suicide attempt (frightening that I was so involved and hardly knew that person from the Joe down the street), kept in touch with people with the same dreams I envisioned for myself, and shared experiences with people in communities far away from the snowy embankments of Northern BC winters. I sorted out old grievances and aired new ideas and felt invigorated by the small space I had carved for myself in the vastness of cyberspace. When we moved back home, my diary travelled with me, always available and still dependable. But I was back home now and perhaps I figured that I was better off socializing with real people in the real world that existed right in my own backyard, so I let things slide. I grew tired of the pop-up ad hell that Open Diary had become, growing too fast for its own good, so I left. And so did most of the other diaries I visited. They grew up and moved on, and we lost touch. I still wrote every so often, but it was piecemeal and the daily goings on of life here swallowed up some of the dreams that I had laid out. I got married, had Julia and found even less time for myself. for deep thoughts and introspective moments. I found other things to occupy myself and keeping my diary, though it hadnt ever disappeared entirely, was certainly not as important as it once was. Until I restarted it here. I was encouraged to get back into it, Sarah convinced me that this community offered more and had less headache than Open Diary presented. I plunged back into it, back to the daily musings, the every day growings of my girl, of my marriage, of my life. And as other people came on board, it grew to be more exciting than ever. At last, my passion for having an online diary was being shared by people I knew! People I could talk to and hug and laugh with over dinner! For me, keeping a diary was never about making a huge stab at entering the profession of writing, or maintaining a log of very introspective things. I've become incredibly forgetful and writing down the little things--Julia's favorite words of the day or the silly games she invents--helps to cement them into some sort of reality that I can look back on, months and years down the line, and perhaps, stir some of those swiss cheese memories back to life. I think that most often when people ask me what I've been doing with my days, I say "nothing" and when they ask me how I've been feeling, I'd say "fine" but when I write an entry about the day and the intensity of my emotions, I realize that they consist of more than "nothing" and that somedays I am not entirely "fine". but it is hard, in every day conversaiton to bring that kind of detail up, hard to justify taking up someone's time by relaying all that personal information. I guess it would seem simply boring in real time. On the computer, you have the luxury of skipping paragraphs or entire entries when the whimsy strikes you. In writing entries you can revisit words and phrases, thing about nuances of the day, consider clever turns of phrases (canoegirl does this particularly well in her writing) and take a moment to appreciate the little things that you never think to give thanks for in reality. And for me, the greatest gift of blogging is the sheer fact that I can do it in chunks, around the attention I want to give Julia, around making dinne, or having a bath. Sometimes an entry can take me four hours to write, and that is fine. I couldnt ask someone who I was talking to to excuse all the interruptions of life simply so I can relay how my day has gone. So coversations sometimes become a matter of convenience--that is, I only have time to say that I am "fine" and that "nothing" has gone on all day--which is a sad but true reality of the busyness of life these days. I should wrap this up, I have grown tired writing, my chicken pecking typing has gone from bad to worse, Julia has fallen asleep and I should rest while she is down. But I shall return, undoubtably with some inane conversation about moving and Julia and the Peanut that is growing enormously inside of me. Until then, onwards. 2:41 p.m. - 2004-02-12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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