A Return to the Blogger's Plight.

This post is a continuation of Me, My Self and My Blog.

TOTALLY one of those people.

Ever know a person who is a rather talented filmmaker/actor/storyteller/dancer/one of those people who seem to be good at anything they try? I have a friend that possesses this god-like ability to somehow immediately absorb any skill she wants, and master it in a fraction of the time it would take my skinny, white, sometimes a little ‘slow’ ass. Although I watch in half-wonderment, half-envy as my comrade one-ups me in everything, I am also taken back by how she had attributed her success to her blog. Struck by how someone I knew could use a shared social media tool to obtain a dream, I began to look at my blog as something that had potential beyond just a hobby. I was also scared at the prospect of my online self  becoming much bigger than my real self.

The advent of pipe dreams and visions of unrealistic blogger fame creates some pretty serious questions. If I am to even attempt to ‘scale out’ my blog, I have to start thinking about it in terms of its entertainment value and where that can intersect (or take away from) the more introspective, personal side I have created. Does the transition from small-scale to super-stardom necessarily mean that your integrity is compromised somewhere in between? How will the intentions behind my blog change while it becomes bigger and more widely adopted? Do I even have control over this process? In some ways I think it’s easier to not change a thing, but sameness becomes staleness and I’ll just get bored and join the exceedingly massive pile of dormant websites that clutter the internet. So….with change comes fear, with fear comes apprehension....how do I mount my fears like a steed and ride into the unpredictable horizon of ‘make-it-or-break-it’ bloggers? Hopefully I’ll still get to use awesome metaphors like that.

I don't know, but I think this is how it would look.

"SEE. I TOLD you leprechaun pole vaulting was REAL."

I recall a discussion in class mid-semester about the ‘self-made expert’ of the internet; the thousands of average people with ordinary intelligence who find some dark corner of the internet and claim unwittingly sound and superior judgement in politics, gardening, vegan baking, raising children, finding God, weightlifting, interpretive dance and just about every other subject of life on earth. Blogs allow people to step into that fabricated role of ‘holy knower of all things’, regardless of creed, experience and/or background. I ponder over how much I’ve let myself do the same. I discuss many things in my blog, though I am not an expert in any of them. Do people actually read my stuff and assume I knew exactly what I was talking about? It’s an interesting case when you consider how I’ve already written about fundraising, university, public broadcasting, tourism, Christmas and more. Interestingly enough, having the gumption to talk about these things and post them for the world to see has in turn increased my confidence as a writer. So is it really such a bad thing?

Now more than ever I am seeing new applications for my blog. Every time I do something big or meaningful I ask myself if I can successfully transform it into a readable post. But the bigger my blog gets, the more mediated it becomes. In fact, as I’ve come to realise lately, everything about the process of creating a blog has been mediated by something else. The act of writing a post is mediated by what I believe to be truth, which in turn is mediated by something else that has convinced me of this (a book, a TV Show, a newspaper, etc). Even when I write about first-hand experiences I have compromised isolated truth; the pure act of seeing a mountain, riding a bus or attending a concert has certain mediation in how I understand it. That filter or lens between my self and the world around me obscures reality and I reproduce this false picture on my blog for all to see.

Thus I have created the most depressing and de-motivating group of sentences about Lost and Found to ever be written. Although the fact that my blog is but an ultra-mediated fabrication of real life, I still feel the need to work on my craft as a writer. I have acknowledged its limitations as something devoid of pure unbridled real stuff, but what, in all honesty, is?

Not much these days.