Posted 6:03 AM by Blah blah

Blogging: Leaving Messages on a Refrigerator (Revealing, Thoughtful)

I've gotten really fed up with blogging.

That's what blogging feels like for me---like I'm married and have lots of great stuff I'm excited about. But my wife doesn't have time to talk to me. So I write it all up and leave messages behind a refrigerator magnet, in hope that she'll get to it eventually. But she usually never replies to what I'm saying.

Some of you will think I'm arrogant or selfish, but I started blogging with slightly different expectations and hopes than some people. I always write for an audience as well as just me. My friends were too busy to reply to some of the things I had bubbling in my mind, so I started looking online for that mental connection, that satisfaction of discussing things you care about with people who really take the effort to listen---people who have opinions of their own.

Blogging has never been mainly a place to complain about my life or post stories of what I had for breakfast. I've always used my blog as a place to have an intellectual or deeper conversation about the things most people ignore when rushing by in their daily lives. What I most wish is that I will find some new friends who care about the world as I do, who will talk back and think about what I've said.

For the few of you who HAVE replied and HAVE had great talks with me, I am really grateful. I am happy I got to meet a special person like you in a place in which our social circles may never have intersected. For all of those people who've talked to me, called me, met me, etc.. I am happy. I am blessed. You know who you are.

I don't care about fame. I care about quality of interaction. I care about provoking thought.

Unfortunately, and call me selfish, but the interaction part of blogging has been really unsatisfying to me. For all the effort put into this blog, I feel like I'm leaving messages on a refrigerator that just get tossed away by a wife who's always too busy to listen. The whole "interaction of the minds" which attracted me to blogging is missing.

Sorry if I'm old-fashioned, but I don't like the idea of purely "Internet" friends. We're either friends or not friends. Period. I dislike all the ways people will go to avoid meeting in person, to take an Internet relationship to the next step. To show mock coyness about revealing their "secret" identity, to never want to talk on the phone, to be unavailable outside of Yahoo Messenger or AIM. C'mon. You want to be friends? Be friends warts and all. I care more about your mind than your looks.

So with Internet friends I tend to try to take it to the next level, since I am old-fashioned and prefer a good talk on the phone to a lot of LOL chatting. My long distance phone bill is cheap. I can call France for 6 cents/minute. So phone cost is rarely a problem for me (except the Philippines). And even then we could still talk by voice chat.

For me anyway, blogging has turned into a big exercise in frustration. Great for writing practice, but bad for real human interaction and the meeting of the minds that I most crave.

I have better talks on the phone with my friends who barely speak English than I do with most of my blog readers.

I don't know if I really see a point to this blog any more. Sorry for being depressing, but it's how I really feel now. Perhaps a better solution is for me to stop blogging but keep in touch with you through phone and email. And I could join a group in real-life that really talks about the world with the interest that I don't find here.

What say you?

Unhappily yours, Raymond