Saturday, February 26, 2005

The Zen of the blog...

Why blog? I ask myself from time to time… I mean, why do I sit here in front of the computer, with no reward other than a sense of personal satisfaction of seeing the words on the screen?

To be a true blogger, I think you need to be a little conceited. I mean, why on earth, (says the left side of my brain to the right…) would anyone be interested in what you have to say? Who cares that the guy in the laundromat gave you a funny look when you pulled the red shirt out of the machine with all of your whites (now pinks)? Why should the public want to know what your favorite movies are? Or that you once accidentally ate some expired cheese? And who in their right mind cares that you once saw a 2000 lb groundhog? (it was made of cement. The Webkahunah loves tacky tourist traps.)

Furthermore, why on Earth do I write it all down to begin with? Part of why I blog is the Zen thing… the destination I get to when I write is unimportant. The joy is in the personal journey I have to go through to get there. I know that part of me also views blogging as a cheap alternative to therapy. Getting it all out of my system in a public forum, with the presupposed anonymity of my internet alter-ego, acts as a catharsis to my wounded psyche.

Wow. That’s a mouthful. Had no idea I was that erudite.

Anyway, I sometimes also wonder why y’all read what I post here. When I first started this, I figured my readers would be just the core group of my friends, and it surprised me when others started coming up to me saying “Hey, I read such and such on your blog…” Perhaps it has to do with the same phenomenon that causes reality T.V. to be so popular here in the U.S.A.. To me, those shows have always been like watching an auto accident… you feel bad for those involved, but are really glad it ain’t you. It could also be the “Dancing monkey” effect, where you continue to watch because the scene because it has so many inherent comedic elements. (The monkey, the monkey’s hat, the Italian stereotype grinding a little music box, etc…) Maybe it’s the “lion tamer” effect, where you watch because you just know at some point the lion is gonna do something unexpected, like maul the tamer. Or maybe it’s the “Billy Joel/Christie Brinkley” effect, where hot chicks are attracted to homely guys that can string a few words together and make the words sound pretty.

Nah… that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

Well I don’t know why you come here, but I do want to thank all of you that check in here on a regular basis. I recently added a counter to the blog, and was stunned to find out just how many regular readers pass through here. Thank you all for reading, and I will continue to try to entertain you in the future.

1 comment:

Orchard P Dirk said...

Well, it is just quite nice to think about the zen of blogging because now that I take a yoga class from time to time one time, I think more about this, as they had a zen meditation workshop on sunday which I did not go to. But perhaps people also come to your blog because you talk about how you have grown much hair since a baby and that is not something everyone says on their blogs and we're all just looking for something that is not what everyone says, unless it is said differently, and in that case, maybe we are if it is something we like thinking about over and over.