notitle
I’ve been thinking about how I blog. Mostly about how I’ve been a real pussy in using this tool (please excuse the sexist language). Specifically for the last 2 months I’ve been thinking about what I say with this space tool opportunity and how I say it. I know that I do a lot of promotion - of myself, of IleSansFil, and of other projects that I’ve been involved with. I have no problem with that. I”m going to continue to do that. I have a problem with what I haven’t been using this space to say or to share.
What is bringing this to a head is that I will soon be teaching others how to blog - “at-risk” youth. And I’m going to feel like a complete hypocrite telling them that authenticity is one of the keys of the micro-publishing revolution when I am so circumspect in what I publish. I’m also going to feel like a heel in telling them they have the power to write anything they are feeling when I limit my writing so evidently.
Mainly - I don’t think that I should be utilising this tool to pretend to be a one-man newspaper. I don’t want to emulate print tools. I’m not trying to be a “citizen-journalist” or a novelist. this is (could be) something different and I’m frustrated by how I’ve been shying away from what I could be doing.
I’m not sure what’s going to come after this. I don’t want to turn this blog in to a livejournal about what I had for breakfast or who I think is cute, but there’s a lot more I have to say than what’s come so far.
March 23rd, 2005 at 12:23 pm
Mike, I don’t think you need to feel guilty about editing or tailoring what you say on your blog. You _could _ say anything you want, we all could. Just because we don’t get your intimate personal details doesn’t mean you are somehow failing in your mission as a free-to-do-what-you-want blogger.
I think that actually, the kinds of things you post about, coupled with the commentary you insert alongside more newsy stuff, tells me a lot more about you than what you had for breakfast. Maybe this is something you can talk about with the at-risk youth - that sometimes a portrait of the author is revealed over time, and your interests and the subjects you tackle on your blog are all part of this identity that you develop that is witnessed by and affirmed by your readers.
I suspect that not all of these youth will necessarily be interested in posting about what they had for breakfast or who they think is cute either - maybe they will reveal themselves in more interesting, less direct ways as well - by blogging about music they like, politics they believe in, things they saw on the news that make them mad, their favourite places to hang out.
I’d say that limits serve a purpose, and they give defining edges around the image one project’s on one’s blog. Everyone eats breakfast, and everyone thinks someone is cute. I read your blog because it gives me more than banalities, and if I pay attention, I get a sense of what you believe in.
March 23rd, 2005 at 2:42 pm
cool. I’m going to think on it before I respond.
thanks for taking the time to share your reaction.
March 24th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
Repeat after me: a weblog is a tool, a technology, a medium. When you teach someone how to use a hammer, you aren’t teaching them how to build a treehouse.
What you use to build your tree house is up to you, and how you build it is up to you. You decide what you publish here, and you do so with many many criteria, not least of which are “what do i want to say?, who do I want to say it to? why am I saying this?”. What persona of yours are you using this voice for? Etc.
Best advice I’ve gotten so far on this: write for yourself. If you aren’t comfortable making something public, don’t write it.
Oh and never apologize for what you think or say. Just mean it.
;)
March 24th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
That said, I think you’re doing great. Keep it up!
March 24th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
hey mike,
I don’t think the “autenthicity” should be an issue - as boris says (sort of) blogging is a tool, not a religion. What you use your blog for is up to you - clearly you have a number of reader happy to read what you write.
in the case of the “at-risk” project, the real point is that blogging gives a publishing tool which allows a person to make media of interest to them available. There’s been one globe story about ISF - but many mtl3p postsing. I am more interested in reading mtl3p than the globe, mainly because you write about things of interest to me - things I don’t get elsewhere.
as for the kids, that (we hope) is what they will find (some of them) in blogging & other media, the ability to create and find things of value to them.
As MK says above - the things you write about DO explain “who is mtl3p.” Or part of you. there is no requirement to reveal all - and in fact–as you might find when you hear your favourite writer talk, or your favourite musician expound on politics, or your favourite actor sing … well sometimes it’s best to leave things the way they are. knowing all of something isn’t necessarily better than knowing the best part of it.
March 24th, 2005 at 9:46 pm
I like your blog as it is, but I won’t complain if you expand what you have to say.
March 25th, 2005 at 9:29 am
by the way that’s not to discourage you from doing other things with your blog, just to emphasize the value in what you are already doing.
March 25th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
1/ the personal is political
2/ news is about real personalities not just the 5 second pullquotes we get about how their lives have been affected by current events (read politics) blogs are for going past a pullquote to the substance underneath.
3/I for one, am completely un-enthusiastic about the idea of having a separate category for “personal”. It’s been a good technique to be always compartmentalizing our actual lives away from our ideas, or our politics, but I think it has its limits as an application.
March 25th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
Okay folks. Not sure if many of you will check back, but that’s cool with me. This is the gist of the post that I didn’t include in “take 2″ - the next post.
When I was young I would daydream about ways to have montreal be covered in ice - all winter. All the roads, the sidewalks, the parcs. I loved skating and I just wanted to be able to skate *everywhere*. I felt more natural, more myself, on skates than I did on feet. When good rollerblades came out - I was in heaven. I wasn’t one of those kids interested in jumping stuff or doing tricks. I just went everywhere. Over everything.
Segue to blogging. Pretty much all my life I’ve struggled with a feeling of disconnectedness from whatever community I’m around. Specifically, I’ve felt that there’s been a gulf between who I am and who I appear to be. The only reason that I wasn’t dreaming of public personal-publishing - especially text-based publishing - was because I couldn’t conceive of such a thing. If I could have been - I would have been a lot more excited about than about roller-blades.
So I’m given this gift, this opportunity to address one of the great divorces of my life and what do I do with it? I talk about a volunteer group. Yes, this volunteer group is the bomb, and yes, internal documents reveal that we will achieve world domination by 2007, but still. There is so much more of _me_ that I could be expressing, exposing, sharing.
The real way that I can tell I haven’t done much with this tool is that I can’t remember the last time that I felt nervous about a post (well, actually I do, it was the above post - but I mean before that). Michelle understood me quite well when I said that - and she understood it from the point of view of an artist. If an artist hasn’t done anything that scares him/her with a piece, than something hasn’t been achieved. I’m looking for that feeling in the future in my blogging. Not every time - but enough so that I remember the previous time.
I don’t think I’ll be a great artist with this - but the same way a 45 yr old suddenly decides to take up watercolours after 20 years of wanting to paint - I’m determined to creatively express myself with this blog - and I want it to be as close to art as I can make it. If its not - I want it to be because of lack of my talent - not because of lack of trying or of fear.
I guess what I’m saying is that, to me, it isn’t about public vs. private. It’s about safe blogging vs having some personal stake in what I say here and how I feel about it. I want to feel that edge.
March 25th, 2005 at 9:27 pm
I like the skating image - it’s very beautiful.
When I was seven my best friend sarah and I wanted to live in a world made entirely out of home-made pizza….(less beautiful, but very tasty)
I think people still try to make worlds based on their dreams, (like you + ISF).
Still ice-city and pizza-world are pretty nice.