Wednesday, July 25, 2012

a coherent online presence: thoughts

I am sitting at my home desk today, in between appointments, trying to catch up on phone calls and tidying my files. Having sipped a few cups of coffee with breakfast, too, I find myself in caffeinated musing mode.

Recently I keep returning to the question of my blog's purpose. This isn't the first time I have struggled with such questions, but as I ease into a new life phase I feel them, again, quite strongly. I first started blogging in college, on Livejournal, then moved to Xanga, and then Blogger. The livejournal was mostly random musings and poem drafts; the Xanga kept our friends updated while we were in Eastern Europe and when we'd first moved to Chicago; Blogger seemed like a cleaner (ad-free) platform.

Here is a confession: I do not produce the sort of blog I, myself, prefer to keep up with. My bookmarked blogs are photo-heavy, often link-heavy (though blogs that are basically advertisements, patterned after the shifts in many magazines, give me a stomachache). They are about finding beauty in daily life, put together by those skilled with a camera.

I am no photographer.

Here is another confession: rhetorically, it is very hard to write a blog for an imagined audience when that audience is so wide, and diverse, and mysterious. I haven't cultivated a commenting culture on this blog (though I love comments and often wish for that!), and so it often surprises me when I find out who's been following it. I sometimes clam up at the thought of offending this or that group (I do not assume, as many seem to, that those who find their way here all agree about politics, or religion, or art, or what is important). I want to post things here that are honest, and meaningful, and personal. The beauty of sensory experience is one such thing, but I am also glad to have a space for posting musings about advertising and faith and gender and literature.

However, I'm aware that a post like "why it is so effing hard to be a Christian", or transcripts of my handful of sermons, or my Advent series, may seem like an affront to some who get updates on the blog--and for various reasons! Some friends have no interest in religion or spirituality and feel assaulted by posts in this vein, and the last thing I want to do is to be one more pushy person of faith. Other friends are uncomfortable with the thought that I've given a sermon at all, or used "effing" in a title (however ironically, since it's nearly impossible for me to swear). Some friends share my interest in literature and theory and theology and politics, and others emphatically don't. One commenter insisted, a few years back, that I stick with posting recipes and writing about food.

But this is not a food blog. It is not an academic blog. It is not a theological blog. It is not a lifestyle blog or a crafting blog or even simply a gratitude blog. Which brings me to a third confession: I am a bit scattered in my own interests. I know this. I like to cook, and to sew, and I have hopes of gardening someday soon. I like to write creatively and to read for pleasure, but I am also a scholar and a teacher--I read popular fiction and esoteric, jargon-filled theory, and I love both. I am a person of faith, which is for me a journey and a struggle rather than a certainty, but it is a deep and abiding commitment. Part of that journey has led me into political convictions that I share with some of my friends and loved ones, but not all of them. I am not willing to assume that those who read what I write will simply nod along and pat me on the back. But I am also less than optimistic about the internet as a site for civil debate. I've seldom seen it done well.

Perhaps the best thing would be for me to curate multiple blogs: an academic blog with working ideas and heady quotes; a spiritual blog with my musings on Christian life; a current events blog with political links and calls to action; a cooking and crafting blog with photos and instructions; a gratitude project blog; a blog full of personal vignettes. Readers could pick and choose which facet they wished to engage in, which version of my writing (of me) they wished to keep up with.

But I am not a bowl of Brachs Pick-A-Mix candy. I am a single person, no more or less complex than the next human being, and these various parts feed into each other. As much as I long to please each person I meet (and believe me, I do, sometimes to a fault), I cannot offer myself as an ice blue mint to one and a caramel to another and a chocolate chew to yet a third and maintain any sense of coherence or integrity in myself. My life is not all academics, and it is not all cooking, and it is not all church or prayer, but it is all of these things, and more. I feel the struggle of that muchness, and its tensions, and sometimes this struggle keeps me silent in this space. But I can't honestly imagine another way that would be better.

So for now, at least, the blog remains as a hodgepodge compendium of my interests and hopes, my sketches of daily experience, my questions about living, my gestures toward Holiness. It is held together, however tenuously, by a quest for truth and beauty and justice and peace, which is the only coherence I know on this earth, and (apologies to Keats) perhaps all I need to know.

13 comments:

  1. I only just skimmed your "effing" post (background research to understand this current one?) and I am, first of all, struck that folks might feel assaulted when they read posts they are not compelled to read; second of all, indignant on your behalf that these folks who are friends feel this way when reading your own personal blog.

    Now I'll retreat for a minute into something gentler and more palatable. I, too, struggle with voice and unity and purpose in my own (lately seldom updated) blog. One of the blogs I read often also had a question about unity of voice (or lack thereof). She is mainly a food blogger but many of her posts are not about food at all. There was, apparently some complaint (though it was minor). Most of her readers, however, (myself included) loved the breadth of her interests and delighted in the range of her writing ability.

    Lately I tend to think of blogging (when it comes to myself, at least) as a possible venue for the "occasional essay"; thoughtful writing on whatever it is that won't let me go. Like any essay (or poem, or book, or sermon--secular and otherwise), we are all free to read the things we love. No one will be tested on what we write in our blogs. It isn't a examination our friends must take to remain part of the group. If our writing displeases some, then perhaps those folks can interact with us at cafes and wine bars or on facebook or anywhere but where we offer up, freely, the writing that is part of what and who we are.

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    1. Thanks for the comments, K. I'm especially struck by the "occasional essay" outlook--that's a way I've seen this blog in the past, and I think it's a good perspective to return to. And I totally sense the goodness of these other forums, too, where dialogue in person (or not in person) allows for a different shape of give-and-take and understanding. I guess what I'm saying is, your response here gives me some courage.

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  2. Perhaps the desire to sort your thoughts into separate blogs could be assuaged by categorizing and labeling your posts within one blog? I have a friend who is a creative writer and writes four separate blogs for the sorts of reasons you describe, and I'm not convinced that's the better way to go. It seems to push the writer towards a limiting persona. My own blogging has been of one sort only, and lately I've wondered whether there wouldn't be value in broadening my approach, since I'm in a different "season of life" (that sounds cliched, I feel uncomfortable).

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    1. Ah, the categories! I should get back to those!

      I think life seasons, however cliched the phrase, are valid reasons for shifting our modes of self-representation and engagement. You are a philosopher AND a great mom AND x number of other things, and finding the space to be those things all at once and feel you're living fully into them makes great sense to me.

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  3. I simply love to read your words, ponder along with your ponderings, smile at your humor, feel the challenge of your questions and imagine your voice animated by facial expressions & hand gestures becoming brackets & exclamations of punctuation.

    I know several of your silent followers who aren't bloggers themselves (as I am not) but are thrilled to read your postings because they know the heart from which they pour and the mind where they are formed.

    Finally, I like the hodgepodge nature of your topics that have keep me wondering what you'll tackle next. Five Sense Fridays provide enough comforting structure without the boredom of complete predictability.

    Please, continue. :)
    Love, dad

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    1. Dad, you're super. Thanks for this encouragement.

      I also like to think that people who know me as you do can imagine the nuance and gesture...that's pretty cool.

      oxo

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  4. I love your blog just as it is--& I don't keep up with many blogs. And if you eventually include even more topics/genres, that will be fun too!

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    1. Oh, Ruth. I love it when you reply even to my little bitty posts. I just changed the comment structure to allow for more dialogue, as that feels better to me, and you're the inspiration for it!

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  5. I like the blog just as it is, too. Blogs ARE puzzling things to work out, but I'm realizing that they are best when not overthought. Just write. When we're interested, we'll read. When we're not, we'll skim for the juicy bits about your glam life as a scholar on the prairies. ;) I've gotten the most positive feedback on the posts that I felt were most controversial (e.g. my most recent post). At times that means I just let it go for a while, to cool off, then pick up again and plod forward. It's a media with lots of heat in the moment, then everyone forgets and moves on, pretty forgiving in the long run.

    Love to you!

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    1. Oh, Laura, how I laughed (twice) reading (twice) your description of a "glam life as a scholar on the prairies." Right.

      I loved the controversial posts, too.

      You're so right about the temporality of the blogosphere. I forget about that too often. Who even remembers last week's fuss?

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  6. I think some of what you are saying about identity and blogging is part of why my own blogging frequency has dropped significantly in the last year. I will think to share some thoughts about a certain topic of interest to me, then think of x many people that I know at least occasionally read my blog that wouldn't be interested or who could take offense, and it keeps me from writing entirely. I realize, however, that the reason I read friends' blogs is to hear their thoughts, since I am no longer around in person to have discussions, and that if my friends also decided to simply not post something because not everyone who would read it would be interested, I would hear from them a lot less.

    I have always enjoying hearing your thoughts and reading your writing, and I am grateful for your pursuit of honesty and integrity in developing an online presence. It is a lesson for me to stop self-censoring, thereby unnecessarily weakening ties to friends separated by distance.

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    1. Kelly, we do the same thing! And I had no idea that you even read my blog! I'm glad you do. I'm glad the internet lets friends keep in touch across time and space. I'm glad we don't all always agree on everything, too.

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  7. I'm a bit late to the party because we were in the process of moving... but, now here to say I like the hodgepodge. I, too, am rather scattered in my interests and musings.I would want a targeted food/theological/lifestyle blog only if I were looking for something on a specific topic by a person I didn't know. But I DO know you, so I like reading everything, the whole of the person, the sense of real life.

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