on blogging

At the heart of it all, in our souls, I think we all just want to be understood.

For some of us, this desire to be understood has manifested itself through blogging, because really, why else would we blog? There’s definitely a part of blogging (and of writing in general) that’s accurately defined as cathartic, but if that was all we wanted, to get things down in writing, we’d just have personal journals. I’m sure all bloggers have their own reasons why they started their blog and why they stay so interactive with it, and so all I can really do here is speak for myself.

I blog because I want to connect, to feel people on a new level, even if it’s in a way that’s often considered impersonal. In some ways blogging (and other forms of internet communication) is impersonal, with its lack of eye contact and hugging and worrying about how I look. But in other ways, it’s more personal than the relationships I share with the three dimensional people in my life, due mostly to the fact that in my blog (and in my interactions with my bloggy friends) I am honest to a degree that is uncharacteristic in the rest of my life. So I share things through my cyber-soapbox in order to find people who will read my words and nod along frantically, thinking (and commenting) “ah, me too!”

I read other blogs for many of the same reasons. I read other blogs because it is at once comforting and shocking to see how many people out there are going through the same things that I’m going through. I like to think that I’m an individual- and in my on way, I know that I’m unique and quirky (as are all of you), but I really am forced to admit that the similarities that we all share far outweigh our differences.

I blog because I know that there will be someone reading each post who has already been there (wherever ‘there’ is: a break up, a relocation, a tough exam, a diet, a fashion crisis, the end of a friendship), someone whose advice can (and hopefully will) save me the pain of dealing with whatever it is alone.

I blog because the world is enormous and tiny at the same time, because I want to have someone to get a drink with if I’m ever in Boston or DC or even Canada. I blog because I’m confident (in myself, in the power of words, in the benefit of meeting new people and sharing our experiences with each other), but I also blog because I’m needy, because sometimes, all I want to do is jump up and down and scream “validate me!”

~ by nicoleantoinette on November 28, 2007.