I’ve felt this very acutely for a while now and I feel like this is the time to say it. I doubt myself, my skills, my writing, this blog, and the reason why I blog.
I read so many blogs daily, using Google Reader, some fashion blogs, some book blogs, and some writing blogs. The fashion blogs are mainly for the sake of filling my head with pretty colors and shapes. I like interesting looking things, and it gets me my daily dose of colors and interesting shapes. Sometimes I feel like I’m an angsty artist and I need to fill my world with art-sy things, you know?
The writing blogs are amazing. They’re not straight forward, “Here’s how to improve your writing” blogs. I don’t really read advice books on anything, because I’m much more of an experimental person. The writing blogs that I follow are really straight writing blogs, either. They’re other types of blogs that have short stories incorporated into them. I guess I became one of them too.
Sometimes I feel I reveal too much of myself, that I make myself vulnerable to people who I don’t even know on the internet. Blogging about myself, the things that I do, travels such a fine line between maintaining privacy and the fulfilling the need to express myself. I recently read Su Ann’s post on blogging, and I thought, “I feel the same way.”
She wrote:
People ask from time to time if I’m going to blog about these things and I keep saying I’m not– I’ve somehow accidentally detached myself from this blogging persona, and no longer see that side of me as an outlet for the rest of myself. But more and more I’ve come to realize that the need to put things in words, in sentences, is inherent to how I organize my thoughts and feelings. it’s not even (just) about expressing myself anymore. without documentation, I become almost like a spectre, drifting across things, never quite getting anywhere. it is a rather uncomfortable sensation that i’d like to avoid experiencing too much…
I often find myself looking over a blogpost before publishing it, and thinking, no, I’m saying too much. Or, I don’t owe anyone all these words and exposure — I don’t even owe them to myself! And then I delete it. But still longing to write, I wonder then about what kind of things I can write about that are consistent with my new misanthropy. Candid and superficial updates about the day-to-day? Pictures of food and travel? Or the opposite: oblique thoughts on things i care deeply about but referred to tangentially and indirectly? I eventually settled on none of the above.
I feel so much things, regret, failure, confusion, and most of all, inferiority. I read Su Ann’s post, and thought, “I feel the same way, but I don’t think I can ever reach that level of sophistication in writing that she has.” Sometimes I want to give up blogging because of that fact. Who am I to write about my life when there are so many people out there who write so much better than I do?
When I do write about my own personal life, I feel like I’m being judged somehow. Why am I sharing my innermost thoughts with people who I don’t even know, much less owe anything to? What is my ultimate purpose? To get to know who I am when I’m at that stage when I’m not supposed to know? To sort out this craziness that is life? I tell myself that I’m trying to figure my life out, but in the end, I don’t feel that I’ve gotten to know myself any better than before, nor am I any wiser.
Sometimes I wonder what if people at school read this blog and connected the dots. I’m scared. I tell myself that I’m not guilty of writing, maybe just a little guilty of not sharing. But these are my innermost thoughts, the thoughts I don’t dare tell anyone, but apparently people on the internet, and I am scared of them seeing me differently.
I’m scared because my blogger personality and my real life personality are two separate entities, and like water and oil, don’t mix. I tell myself it’s okay, but sometimes I doubt myself. I tell others, that it’s okay. Do I really believe it? If I so, then why am I scared?
Only one person who knows me in real life knows that I am the one behind this blog. It’s a weird thought, knowing that she knows the two sides of me. Sometimes I want to take back the thoughts I wrote on this blog, to act like I never wrote them, shared them, and published them in the first place. Sometimes, I have an urge to press “Revert to draft” and leave it in my drafts folder on Blogger, never to see the light of day. Other times, I press “Publish” without thinking twice.
When I feel so acutely like this, I tell myself that I need a break from blogging. I tell myself that and I feel the inextricable pull of myself towards writing, going on Blogger despite these sentiments and I continue to write. I feel myself so oddly attracted to blogging, no, writing. I have an need to organize my thoughts into words, however choppy or bumpy. Whether its on paper or on Blogger, I need to write down my thoughts.
It’s taken me this long to truly realize that in the end, this blog will never “truly” be a book blog. It’s going to be a journal of my life, this life that revolves so much around books and written English, because that’s who I am. To those naysayers, I can only say one thing. This blog is so connected with books and my life that I can’t separate the two. There is no sorry because after all, this is my blog. To those who think that I am getting too cocky and not doing enough research on my audience, first and foremost, this is my blog and I am the one creating the posts. I can never write only about books. Please refer back to the beginning of this post to read why.
Bye. See you later.
