Musings on My Future in Blogging

I've been going through the older entries here. I started this blog years ago to get my thoughts out of my head and into a place where I could come back any number of years later and see how my thinking has evolved or changed. It's strange to me how familiar all of the entries seem even though I remember writing almost none of them; I typically would write one and never read it again after posting it.

In doing that, I noticed how much more transparent I used to be when writing here. There were actual stories, and sometimes I would write my complete thoughts on some significant mental conflict I'd been having. In reading the entries, I can see that my writing has become less linear and coherent and is now far more sporadic and largely seems meant to promote whatever I'm enjoying at that particular moment in time (music, books, politics, what have you). Hardly compelling reading.

I'm not entirely sure what to do about this; lots of people read here via my FriendFeed, or on Facebook, or by actually just visiting the Blog. And I love that. I love thinking that maybe my thoughts are interesting or unique enough to be worth peering into from time to time, even if that's not necessarily the case. But full transparency here, like I used to write, is less of a good idea now. It used to be cathartic, but now I think I would feel a little too on display. A little bit naked, open to scrutiny or judgement from people who only know me through facebook or from back in Hinton, when I was more or less a completely different person from the one I've grown into.

So I've got to find a balance here. I want to share what's going on in my life and how it's affecting my thoughts, because there are people who read this (Nancy, dad, Ashlee, Nick, Cobb, and others) who take genuine interest and use it as a way to keep up with me. Other people have told me that they have read it as a way to get to know me better. Still others have read it to find things that they perceive to be wrong with me and then attempted to use them as arguments against me in battles I tried to leave behind years ago. Surely there's a way for me to do this, and do it well, while not leaving myself open to attack.

I'm going to give it a shot, simply because as I said above, I like doing this. I plan to post more frequently, which shouldn't be too difficult given my relatively light workload for this semester. Here's hoping you hear from me soon.

-John

Listening to - the Dr. Horrible soundtrack (now available on iTunes!)