For some odd reason I’m not really comfortable posting long ranty things to my LiveJournal. There’s something weird going on in my head there. I think it’s because I have this constant awareness that I’m dropping an acrid pissed off political rant in the middle of a couple of dozen nice peaceful friends pages, between a perfectly harmless quiz answer and a thoughtful introspective discussion of someone’s day. “If I were a Sluggy Freelance character, I would be — holy shit, what the hell got up his ass?” That sort of thing. Also I keep finding myself self-conscious about profanity, cause I know some of my readers aren’t fond of the stuff.
Or, perhaps, I’m just a snob who derives much of his self-image from being an outsider. Personally, I vary in my opinions.
I also need a place to tuck links to various and sundry pages that don’t need to be in my bookmark list but which do need to be saved somewhere I can go find them. If Mozilla had a bookmark list and a list of folded over page corners, that’d be perfect. But it doesn’t, so I’m just going to stick them in my blog.
So one way or the other, some of the time I’m writing for other people and that fits LiveJournal pretty well. But right now, most of my impulses are directed at writing for myself. Thus, Population: One.
5 Comments
I like reading what you have to say. So I will come here. I like rants more than quizzes and what-I-did-today posts (although the latter are useful for keeping up on gossip, I guess).
See, I *like* having rants in the middle of my “which Narnia book are you?” quizzes and so forth. I’ll intend to check here–and it’s silly of me to say I shan’t, since I keep a journal separate from livejournal too–but at the same time I fear I’ll forget. Ah well.
Dude, and I just found you and added you to my friends page. I’m essentially lazy, so I’m not sure I’ll check this page specifically as often as I check my nice, single, livejournal friends page.
But rant away, you’ve always been good at it, which makes it worth reading.
I, on the other hand, don’t use the friends option on LJ, so am pleased to have a ‘dead journal’, as Trip calls it, to visit. Especially if it gets updated more often. 🙂
I think #1 my writing should be for myself. Fun or otherwise beneficial to write, and enjoyment or edification of others is secondary (including my enjoyment at reading it later, also secondary) Other people may have different reasons for writing… mine is that I like writing and I should do it more often.
People read others for various different reasons, but I can tell you why I collect and bookmark and read other people: first and foremost because I know them and respect them and have some interest in what they have to say. Entertainment value is totally optional – it is my relationship with the friend and my regard for him that is key. (That is why I *despise* quizzes, they are basically ads for some goofy web page not written by anyone I care about. People who post more quizzes than personal-relevant-thinking-type content usually get filtered.
Anyway, you should write for your own reasons and perhaps not try to worry about your intended audience when you are writing – you can decide after you have written something whether you want to share it with the world, or a small circle, or nobody.
I like the new site. It is slick as far as blogs go. The only down side is that as a reader it is one more place to bookmark and check. (Yours and Angie’s and Trip’s, similar problem, the entries are not as “accessible” to the casual reader) This probably means I will check in less often, but I will still go to the trouble, because I enjoy reading your writing. This is not meant to discourage you from maintaining your own site, because your enjoyment at creating it is the most important thing. But, count one vote in favor of rants. I value someone else taking the time to talk about their thoughts, feelings and beliefs 1000% more than quizzes, reposting articles from somewhere else, etc.