a lefty’s log

i’ve been turning over in my head that quote in my last post, you know the one by dale austin from his “non-blog” testing the water:

A few years back, when I’d just begun to post things on the web, an old friend of mine suggested that I was running a risk putting anything about myself up in public. He felt it made you vulnerable. Well, I’m not stupid. The juicy bits simply are not here. I have no desire to invite any more hassle into my life than the relatively benign material that is here has already generated. I very much doubt that I will ever be inclined to start blogging for that very reason. For some folks the conflict level seems to escalate to the point where it takes over their lives, and I have better things to do than respond to attacks.

Dale Austin, June 1, 2004

there is much truth to his post. my reasons for not posting aren’t as consice as his, because of course, i do have a blog. but if you must have a short answer: you know, sometimes, i’m just not that into it.

origins & background
the reason why i wanted to get in to online blogging wasn’t because i felt that my life was so compelling that it had to be made available for all the world to see. at least not yet. i merely wanted to make a digital version of my paper logs, one safely kept away from fires, floods, falling houses and the like. i figured that the magic of the internet was my solution. it also dovetails into my belief of openness, transparency and the open-source movement.

there was a time when i was christian (i promise i’ll post on this sometime). in the version that i’d been sold on, one of the buzzwords was openness. in theory, it is a great, liberating thing that helps christians keep others in the congregation on our toes and gets everyone in the mindset of working towards being the best she can be.

while i no longer count myself as one of these types, i do believe that openness is a great thing, i just haven’t figured out exactly where it fits in everyday life. if we lived in a village like the one of shyamalan’s fame, sure, it’s a great thing. but this is modern america. in this world of half-truths, image-building and botox, personal openness of this sort isn’t really a virtue. (in government and big business, this is a different matter.)

i am also influenced by a book called speaker for the dead, by orson s. card. in speaker, andrew “ender” wiggin makes amends for the (near) annihilation of an entire race of aliens (covered in the previous book ender’s game & short story with same title) by promising the queen that he’d find a world for her to repopulate and inhabit. he also publishes an apology that recasts the liberation of war as a genocide, and himself as a mass murderer. in doing so he launches a cultural phenomenon creating a class of people who become professional eulogists. “speakers” or “speakers for the dead” as they’re come to be known are secular eulogists who tell the impartial, well-researched story of those who have died, giving biographical context to a life where previously there were only individual interactions and noise.

i recommend the books, but, back to the blog and why i don’t post more often.

back to the blog
perhaps when i die, i thought, i’d open up the logs to the public. still, this is no megalomania, it’s just easier to not have to defend the not-so-nice details of life when you’re alive, but to allow them to be covered by the catch-all “let’s not speak ill of the dead” caveat.

in this matter, let me be clear, i’m not fooling myself into thinking i’ve got some major traffic here. in all of the trillions of words available over the net, and almost as many many more-enticing images, why, oh why, would anyone spend any time reading this drivel. i don’t know, there’s no telling what some crazies will do. but this isn’t about you or potential stalkers.

i’ve been a person who’s kept a paper-and-pen journal for over fifteen years. unfortunately, a few of the early ones have been lost to oblivion for one reason or another. i got into online journalling so i could alleviate the toting around of sketchbooks, wirebound notebooks and composition books, trying to find a pen (of which i’m rarely in short supply anyhow). via the internet i’d ostensibly be able to journal anywhere, fact-checking at my leisure. well, it’s become a lot more difficult to find an internet-connected keyboard than it is to find a pen, at least when i have something to post. that’s a little more than ironic (in the popular sense), since i sit in front of one for nearly 10 hours, four nights a week.

chalk up my not posting to a work environment that is locked up tighter than a federal intelligence agency what with keylogging software and remote internet packet sniffing. now, i furtively scribble on napkins and scraps of paper that i stuff into my pocket-sized compo book for safe keeping. by the time i get home, i don’t want to even see a keyboard anymore, let alone type on one for any length of time. no keyboard no post.

i still want to make available to the internet many of my old journal entries. there is much to be said about digitisation. but, since my handwriting is something on the unreadable side, scanning and OCR technology probably won’t work. i’ll have to key it all in by hand.

it may happen.

maybe you’ll be made aware of it.

all in time.