Oh the burden of blogging...

I'm not a blogging type of girl. I suspect, having grown up in a world where we learned about one another almost exclusively from live person-to-person contacts, going one step further and publishing my ideas and ruminations on a public site is really uncomfortable to me. I mean that to some extent we were able to control not only the content of the message about us but also how wide a net we cast in broadcasting that message. That is, tell one friend and a small group knows something; tell all your friends and that same news becomes common knowledge among your acquaintances. Put it on a website, however, and the guy that sits down next to you on BART may know more about how you think and what you value than many of your friends do. Worse, if you publish your picture, he knows who you are as he sits beside you and to you he's a complete stranger.

As I said -- uncomfortable.

To add to the irony, not only do I make my living creating mechanisms to share information via the Web, through web sites, internet portals, etc. but I'm also an early-adopter of emerging technology. I was the first of my friends to have a PC (I built it myself), a Palm Pilot, an iPod, my own domain name, an email account, etc. And yet I prefer the feel of paper, its toothiness and weight. I love my bright journals, red and black, with their satisfying heft and soft leather covers. I love how they give and flex when I feel inexplicably compelled to bend them.

I have also come to love the scratch of pencil on paper. I like the difference between filling a space with hash marks or taking my pinkie and smudging that space to create a satisfying, rich, dark fill. The marks on my virtual page, my blog, are each representations of 16 bit integer values. I can construct what I wish with them, within reason, but my tools are rigid. They are pre-defined, prescribed, legislated by "governing bodies." On the contrary, my random scratches with pencil, pen, erasers are my own. If I want to use ketchup, or masking fluid I may.

Blogging, web publishing in general, robs me of the tactile pleasures I get from writing.