flotsam manifestoes
back in january, i put up a blog bearing the above name on live journal.i thought i might dip my toe into more anonymous writing, using the blog as an outlet for creative fiction and outspoken rants and raves, and using the degree of facelessness i would enjoy as a litmus test for whether people who don't know me outside the blogosphere would interpret my more divisive stuff any differently from the people that do.
my intention in giving it the title i did was to play with the notion i felt i sensed among blog readers, whether i intuited it erroneously or not: that argumentative blog entries are, by their very existence in the public realm, authors' attempts at asserting their own whims, opinions and conclusions as hard and fast rules, as static fact -- as 'manifestoes.' the 'flotsam' part was my way of framing these 'manifestoes' (my own as well as others') in a manner that respects what they ultimately are: missives to a defined readership (general public, maintained among friends or anywhere in between) that can be read for free and are free to be expounded upon or abandoned entirely. take it or leave it propositions. nothing more.
if you click the link, you'll probably notice that the only post contained therein is a repost of an earlier entry from this blog.
that one foray into a new forum marked for me the beginning and end of a sour phase of self-searching that a lot of bloggers -- even the truly great ones -- seem to go through.
during that time, i evaluated the things that made me doubt the value of this blog and myself as a writer -- a tiny readership; indifference of my writing among even those few people; my inability to present certain ideas, both big and small, in lucid prose; misunderstandings resulting from assumptions people make about what i write based on what they feel they already know about me; misunderstandings resulting from assumptions i make about my readers and where i think they'r coming from. this hodgepodge of concerns, however, seemed to have little to bear on my ability to fulfill my motivations for starting to blog in the first place: to exercise my writing muscles; to vent frustrations or project my joy with the world among people i feel are good people; to make these people laugh; to inspire different friends to converse with me and with each other about subjects of mutual interest; to explore ideas, whether they are still in the embryonic stages or further along in realization, by fleshing them out on the computer screen.
i came to the conclusion that there was little practical or meaningful purpose to my experiment with live journal, and i nixed it.
my blog tries on lots of different hats when it comes to content. it experiments with voice and tone. maybe it presumes to be smarter or funnier or more virtuous or passionate or well-informed than i myself can respectfully claim to be in person. it may be a labor to read at times. it may be a joy at others.
regardless of all of that, though, i assure you, dear reader, that i am doing the best i can to be honest with who i am in what i write. take it or leave it.
no comments on this one, please. use the contact link in my profile if you've got something to say.
posted by jomilkman @ 12:01 PM
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