Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Hey, You

Yeah. You. Let me tell you something about Blogging. It's a snapshot. And it's a Godsend. It helps get out the words that are screaming in your head- That maybe you can't say to anyone else, not even the people who love you most in the world. Maybe they're angry words, maybe they're sad words, maybe they're deliriously happy words. Maybe they're something you wish someone had said to you. You can click "Publish Post" and put those words out there and leave them in Cyberspace and get back to living your life.

And sometimes, when you put them out there, something magical happens. Sometimes people crawl out of the woodwork of this big thing we call the Internet and they say "Me too" or "I'm listening" or "Have you tried...?" and there's a wonderful thrill of connection and you feel like those raw, painful words, or those silly giddy words, poured out in a moment, mean something to someone else.

Comment, by all means. Challenge, educate, enlighten. But be respectful.

Blogging is a brief moment in someone's life, not a 24/7 live feed. Don't use blogs to judge. If you don't like what you've read, then I'm sure there's a big red x in the corner of your browser just like there is in mine.

"Authenticity" of blogs? Well, okay, but you better be ready to let someone judge the "authenticity" of your painstakingly posed photographs.

((This is not to say that people are not hurt when a blog they have come to read and believe in is revealed to be wholly false, such as about a person who never existed))

There are plenty of pieces- good and bad and mundane- of my life that do not make it to this blog. I am more than what you see here. And I choose to believe that the people behind the blogs I read are more than what they show me.

I'm doing my best, and I choose to believe that about the authors of the blogs I read, too. If you don't, if you can't, then maybe you should stop reading blogs. I know you should definitely stop reading mine.

4 comments:

Keri said...

Love it! And I agree...having people stop by and see " me too" when I was so homesick in Rusia those first few weeks really helped alot. I wish everyone had a blog. WEll, ALMOST everyone:)

love you!

stellarparenting.com said...

Well said Someone else describes it as being invited into someone's parlor, play nice, ok. I hate trolls

Cindy Callahan said...

Actually, my x is small and kinda blends into the colourful theme I currently have applied to Google chrome :-)

Ok, that was random. Nice post. I find blogging to be such a wonderful way to voice things that I can't always put into words until there's a keyboard under my fingers. Although I spend far more time reading other blogs and commenting than I do updating my own.

Chad said...

Beautifully put, even if all of our Xs aren't big and red :p