It is a strange thing to assemble a set of statements about oneself. By which, everyone who knows me or is interested in knowing me, now has a new body of information to figure me out. What I write about myself and my outlook on the world might mesh with what you know of me, but I'd guess that often, I surprise you. Perhaps, in the sense of literary character, that surprise is what makes the read interesting. Of course, your read is still not the same as everyone else because you may find me to be a pretentious douche, or you might hold me in high regard. Either way, the process I go through to write a blog and put it out there for the world to see is not directed at my interpretation of your interpretation of me. It is an attempt to condense myself down to a few, consistent tellings of who I am, what I think, and what I am going through. It may also be an attempt to shift the perspective of what most people think I am, including myself (my interpretation of the generalized other, Mr. Mead).
But those consequences are even less isolated. They reach the public, and the public reacts to them, creating anger, annoyance, intrigue, boredom, whatever. And then you treat me different when we know eachother in the real world. Because now written-Mike becomes the Mike you know, and maybe we forget what is special about a conversation I have with you, rather than a crowd that includes you.
And there is the effect that blogging has on the way I percieve the world. When I try to construct an image of myself, what happens when I put that face forward to the world, rather than the cracked and wrinkled Mike of old. Am I socializing myself to be what my own blog tells me to be. Maybe I also set my self up with the blog, construct my own consciousness for future social interaction where I am in line with what I write.
Tonight I felt embarrassed at how arrogant and presumptuous I had been in my previous blog, when I went to a party and things weren't as chipper as I thought they might be, and there were moments when homesickness burned deep down to the small of my back -- around so many people that I don't know and, at least in a situation where they are all drunk or high, don't really care to know or even believe I can -- that I wondered if this damn blog was to blame.
Of course, as the night drug on, and I missed my friends and family back home more and more and I withdrew into the comfortable spaces of my own thoughts while everyone around me got adult and intoxicated and I didn't really know anybody, instead of forcing myself back on stage, I started thinking about writing this blog.
-Mike
1 comment:
Goddamnit.
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