Sunday, March 8, 2009

Blogging breeds narcissism... I think.

My fingers move across the keyboard in an attempt to prick morsels of meaning out of the air, out of cyberspace, out of my head, and meld them together in an intelligible, articulate, ultimately meaningful blog post.

What does blogging really accomplish, though? It enlightens others to my thought processes, makes them aware of what I care about and sometimes informs them of funny or interesting events in my life. Of course you want to know all about me and my opinions. Does this form of relaying information from my brain to your brain help define who I am? Maybe.

Sometimes, I get so fed up with my blog, email, iChat, facebook, I just want to delete it all and go climb to the top of a remote mountain and get all this cyber mumbo jumbo out of my system. I just want to extricate myself. Ahhhh. But the next day I'm usually right back at it. I put off another paper to post another quite unecessary blog. I can never bring myself to delete things either, because, maybe I'll want to read them later, right? (Thank goodness for gmail and it's archival capabilities... I never delete a single email. Currently I have over 3,000 emails in my inbox.) Why is it so hard for me? As if, if I delete it, I lose a part of my history or identity.

"I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies... it's exhausting. "
(from He's Just Not that Into You)
Why does my pulse quicken when I see that little red box in the bottom right hand corner of my facebook page? Who is talking to ME, who invited ME to an event, who was admiring a photo of ME? Yes, I enjoy sending other people messages and looking at other people's photos, but really it's all about that little red box.

When I think about it, it's exhausting to worry (even if it's subconsciously) about how I am projected through different mediums to all different kinds of audiences. I wish I didn't care when no one comments on my blogs, but I do. I wish I wasn't concerned about my various portrayals through the internet, or that it didn't really affect me, but it does... I haven't really decided what I'm going to do about it yet. Or if I'm even going to do anything at all.

2 comments:

Jeffery said...

Hit the nail on the head. Even if it starts out as something else, the potential to devolve into something like that is always there. But please don't delete yours.

Elizabeth said...

Oh I can so relate. However, I do want to know what goes on in YOUR life and hear about YOUR thought processes. I'm not sure what will come of me if you delete your blog. It always makes me laugh.