Bloggers: A body of the disembodied
Sheyna Galyan, Robert Avrech, and other writer/bloggers are cordially invited to chime in) is that we show our readers the best of us, but not the rest of us. Our readers see what's on our minds and in our hearts, but not the nitty-gritty of our everyday lives. They don't hear our husbands complaining that we talk their ears off, our wives complaining that our snoring keeps them awake all night, our children complaining that we're always yelling at them, our co-workers complaining that we're always, well, complaining. It's an opportunity to expose ourselves in the abstract--and how often does a Jewish woman get to expose herself in public without being accused of lacking tzniut (modesty)? :)
On the other hand, being disembodied doesn't work at all for a choreographer. I first posted this on October 29, 2006, and Mark/PsychoToddler and Ezzie were kind enough to comment. But despite the fact that I've updated that post twice since then, adding two more goodies and some fun trivia, no one else seems to have noticed. (Sniff.) And I have yet to receive a single comment to this updated post. I put a lot of time and effort into these updates. Am I supposed to not be upset that no one seems to care?
And you wonder why I wrote The Kvetching Post. Here's Elie's comment to that one:
- Elie said...
-
It's not a competition. This is your personal diary, which you are good enough to share with us. Anyone who likes it, and/or likes you, will be here for the long haul. So forget about "Blogger A" and just keep being you.
It's not entirely true that I'm just sharing my personal diary. I have plenty of what I call "memoir files" on my computer that will never be published on this blog or anywhere else. When I want to talk to myself, I'm perfectly capable of doing so. But when I publish a post, I publish it in the hope of getting a response. To be honest, I blog both as a means of self-expression and for the ego boost, and I find it difficult to be sanguine about the fact that so many of my posts get no comments at all.
Chaim said...
Is that the dirty little secret we are all keeping? We blog because our wives don't want to hear us kvetch? :-)"
Nu, what's so secret about it? :) I joke with my husband that I'd bend his ear even more than I do now if I weren't blogging, and he doesn't exactly dispute the point. :)
PsychoToddler said...
If the people I live with found me as fascinating as the blog readers did I would close it in a minute."
One of the fundamental attractions of blogging is that it's literally all talk and no action. We can make our foibles seem funny to our readers, but our families and friends, who have to live with such nonsense, know how truly annoying some of it is. We're never heroes on the home front. That's just the way real life is.