This is an actual photo Mara took last week.
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I'm trying one of my flaky, rarely-successful health experiments this summer, and maybe I'll even write seriously about what the motivations for it are.
But probably not, as VDuck is not really a platform for that kind of writing. It might seem like it could be, I mean we talk about some personal stuff here, right? Not really. VDuck is a tightly-controlled and meticulously-obscured representation of life here at 100M that is almost never as serious as real life is. It's like The Matrix of Amsterdam food blogs.
But what if we wrote a truly serious sentence, like this: I'm discovering that this relationship between 1) allowing people social access to me/us, and 2) my firm control of that access is turning out to be one of the defining influences/issues in my adult life, and the entire process of denying that access is getting to be exhausting in its boringness, or possibly vice versa.
Serious questions abound. Does it have to be this difficult? Do I really need to obscure everything I say out here? What would happen if I didn't? It's not just the blog, I'm pretty difficult to get at in real life as well. But what am I gaining from this? Mystery? Scarcity? Am I afraid the real shit's not interesting enough? Am I afraid to be disappointed in people I think I like?
Huh. We'll just let that sit there for a while and see if it survives The Deletion Process. Up next: My Flaky Summer Diet XIV.
P.S.: I'm so hilarious. The next thing I did after this public moment of existential angst was to completely un-ironically turn on comment moderation, essentially controlling people's access to me, etc. Seek help!
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6 comments:
the real shit is always interesting enough, but I guess it all depends on the way you describe it. Being mysterious about the real stuff can actually make it more of a TMI situation, than being open and unmysterious.. at least that's how I feel about it. Mysteriousness gives readers the feeling that maybe there are other readers who are In The Know, so they feel left out of something possibly important. And I´ve done plenty of that mystery writing myself..
If there's nothing to guess, it's every reader for themselves to decide wether they like what you write or not, for the writing's sake, not for the mystery's sake.
Of course, the question is remains, what do you as the writer want from the blog?
And I guess that's part of the question I'm asking too: what do I want from this blog anymore? If I tell myself I'm documenting my/our lives because much of it is beautiful or poignant or funny and let's face it memories eventually fail, then: fuck, am I not doing a perfect job of that. I'm pretty much just documenting my manufactured VDuck persona's perspective on a tiny portion of our lives.
Or maybe that's too harsh. My manufactured VDuck persona is truly me, just not all of me (although it's more me now than it ever has been). I work really hard on making sure that what's on the page is the voice in my head: there would truly be no point to this for me if it didn't sound like me talking to you. But just like when I speak in "real life", what comes out is highly edited.
More about the mystery angle later...thanks for discussing xxoxoxo
well, show me a blog that is not this:
"I'm pretty much just documenting my manufactured VDuck persona's perspective on a tiny portion of our lives."
Edited, sure. Every form of communication is edited unless you´re crazy. Isn´t the editing only a problem when you start feeling misunderstood? Or, unable to get your point across?
Very interesting food for thought, all this. My own reasons for blogging are so very different, yet, many of the same issues arise.
I don't know, I've seen some pretty unedited-seeming blogs...like, as-fast-as-you-can-type Courtney Love-style diary entries, but probably not "crazy".
But yes I know what you mean. The editing is a problem at the moment, not because I feel misunderstood or inarticulate, but because it's starting to feel symptomatic of larger interpersonal issues in my life. But yes, more upon a bit of reflection.
I'm still working this out, so there will probably be lots of little comments here and there.
Comment One: I'm remembering that this blog isn't just for Mara, although she's the only one who will understand the whole thing. I forget that I have people far away for whom this serves as a constant email telling them what I'm up to. And because of that...
Comment Two: There is mystery. There are people like you and J-Kim/Hilly who know enough about my life and circumstances for me to be economical or oblique and you will still know what's going on. But when my cousin Joey reads this after not talking to me in 15 years, it's nice that he's not immediately confronted with TMI.
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Also: I do have another unlisted blog that probably only Mara will ever read, it's barely edited at all. It's got looooove letters, semi-recent chat transcripts between the two of us, retyped FAXes from the 90s that were physically disintegrating, and wow I hope it's less psychotically freakish than it sounds.
Why put it in a blog? Longevity, backup, accessibility. I don't trust our in-house data management skills. Freak.
Mortality obsessions aside, the question seems to revolve around, yes, as you said, what am I trying to accomplish with VDuck. Maybe too many things.
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