Food For Blogging Thought

Before Jules at Everyday Mommy took her blogging break, she left us this interesting post, and Kim at Hiraeth wrote some wonderful thoughts in response in a post called, “I Am Not My Blog.” This is my latest attempt at my own thoughts on this subject. I’ve tried several attempts at my own “I Am Not My Blog” post, but it always comes out too wordy and sharing too much, and this one probably suffers from the same problems. Anyway, both of these posts hit something of a nerve with me and they articulate well some of the reasons I sometimes feel extremely uneasy with this little hobby I’ve chosen.

There is a real sense of false relationship when we blog. We do feel like we know the bloggers we read, but really we only know as much as that blogger is willing to share out here on the internet, and we just assume those things are actually what the blogger believes and thinks. I got a little uneasy this summer when I realized my readership had increased a bit. Granted, let me just state right now that I don’t have a huge amount of readers and I’m not really trying to, though I wouldn’t blog if I didn’t want anyone to read it. But if I think about it too much, every once in a while it is still unnerving when I realize there are people I’ve never met and I don’t know what assumptions they are coming in with reading my thoughts. It makes me uneasy at times when I share some of my more personal thoughts. In fact, there are times I worry that I share too much about my kids, and I’m thinking a lot about that. This unease has been good for me, in a way, too, because it has helped me to be extra careful to be specific with my word choices and definitions when I write about Christianity and my faith and what I’m learning as I read and study the Bible.

I do want to be careful to be accurate and faithful to the Word when I write either devotional, serious, or even the light-hearted thoughts. No matter that this is just a hobby, even the most menial things I do should be done for God’s glory, and I don’t want to be careless with the words I type, either. While I’m fairly transparent when I share about my own journey through life, meaning I don’t want to hypocritically present myself as something I’m not, I also don’t share everything about me or the struggles and joys I face. That would be impossible and also foolish for a lot of reasons. Another thing, in this day and age internet security is something to be aware of, so I don’t always share a lot of names or details that a close friend would know, though I have to admit it’s really annoying to just type initials for names of my family. My husband laughs about it sometimes and says it reminds him of the movie Men in Black and how the agents’ names are all just letters. I also try not to embarrass my kids or anyone else with what I choose to share.

In spite of the unease I sometimes feel and the inevitable slumps that sometimes leads to, I do enjoy writing my blog and reading and commenting at others’. It’s been a fun hobby, but I do wish, sometimes, that we could all remember that internet familiarity is different from real life familiarity. As much as I care about my blog friends, and I do, and I even pray for many of them often, I also know that I shouldn’t assume a closer friendship than is actually possible through just reading blogs. I do wonder if we all took that to heart if the comments on blogs would remain much more civil. On screen communication has certain limitations that face-to-face dialogue does not. Much is missing when you can’t judge tone of voice, facial expression, body language, etc., or clarify underlying assumptions and comments, and sometimes the dialogue in the comments can get heated or misunderstood when a joke or an offhand remark is taken the wrong way or when we get offended that the author holds different opinions from us on things that we think strongly about, though I’m thankful I haven’t really had much of that here. Let’s face it, there are fundamentals of the faith we should be willing to stand on and about which there is no room for opinion, and there are other things that are matters of opinion or conscience and on which we can freely differ even as fellow believers in Christ. Better not to get our noses out of joint on those nonessential things, especially when dealing with a blogger we don’t know personally. I’ve been guilty of misinterpreting tone before, and you see it often on more controversial blogs when the comments can get ugly. I wonder if that’s precisely because we can’t really dialogue in real time in this format and because we assume a more familiar friendship than we actually have a right to assume. It’s pseudo-dialogue rather than the real thing.

Anyway, that’s just my little rambling two cents. Those two posts are worth reading.