“What you see on someone’s weblog is not necessarily the whole of that person.”
Having had my own run-ins with readers who perhaps read too much into what I do, or who are looking for clues into my glorious hidden personality, or who assume that they “know” me from the 2 or 3 things I post a day, I thought: Yes. Michele is right.
What you read on my blog is NOTHING compared to the whole picture.
What you get here, for the most part, are my opinions about things. My convictions.
My opinions and my convictions are NOT the sum-total of me. As a matter of fact, they are the least relevant, in terms of who I am to my family, my friends, my loved ones, my nephew.
If you asked my friends: “Hey, who is Sheila to you?”, they would not say, I guarantee, “Well, she thinks that Ted Rall is an ass.”
Of course not. They’re gonna talk about my essence, my personality, favorite memories – whatever.
What you get here is me blabbing my mouth off about things that piss me off, or things that I notice, so that I don’t have to bore my friends with all this stuff, and we can actually enjoy each other’s company, and chill OUT.
And for the record, Michele?
I can tell, just from the way that you write, that you are “living the good things”. That energy is in your personality, it’s in your sense of humor, it’s your turn of phrase … It’s in the style of your writing itself.
Let’s all live the good things.
I’m blushing. Any praise is high praise coming from you.
“What you get here – is me blabbing my mouth off about things that piss me off, or things that I notice – so that I don’t have to bore my friends with all this stuff, and we can actually enjoy each other’s company, and chill OUT.”
I blog to keep my girlfriend from strangling me in response to hearing one too many twenty minute ramble about Uzbekistan or the Democratic Party’s delegate selection process.
i am my blog – my blog is me
A friend of mine who reads my site commented that a lot of what I wrote was ‘personal.’ I countered by noting that I was selectively personal – that there was lots of things I left out – as he was aware, since he knows me in real life.
I think of it as a kind of sleight-of-hand – with one hand I reveal – to dazzle (hopefully) or at least entertain. This distracts from what remains in the other hand – the hidden, the unsaid – the full picture of who I am.
Dan: “sleight of hand” … Very nicely put. I know just what you mean.
Reveal and conceal in the same moment…
Interesting, the double entendre in the name of your blog:
obscurorant … Perhaps it is because you rant about “obscure” things … but it also could be seen in the context of what you are talking about here … Lots of things obscured from view.
Aah, I wish was that clever! But the name actually came from a joke. A friend and I noted our talents for researching and finding odd information via the net and ‘decided’ we should go into business doing the same. Various joking suggestions for site names for our business followed – then she surprised me by buying me the doman obscurorama.com as a present. When setting up the blog obscurorant seemed to come naturaly.
It is kinda serendipitous though. ;-)