Sexeteria

So, y'know, I started this personal journal thing a while back, not a blog, just doing a lot of keeping in touch with people online thing. And I wrote about stuff in it, depending on what was on my mind.

And the thing is, that space got defined in a certain way, sort of as my virtual living room, and there's stuff I just don't feel like talking about there. Politics stuff, some. Kink stuff, some. Religious stuff, some.

So I started a second journal to work through some stuff where I needed to get the thoughts out of my head, somewhere public, but it needed to be not-me. It's linked up in a way that someone with the context can figure it out pretty damn easy, but I never publicised it.

And a while back, I started an actual honest-to-gods blog, because a friend of mine said something I needed to respond to, and I needed to not respond in her space, and I needed it to be not in my living room. And I'm not publicising it either, I'm must watching it spread through osmosis. Just writing the stuff I feel like writing about that doesn't go in my living room.

I haven't written in that second journal for ... a couple of years, I think. The need for it went away.

What I'm trying to say here is, yeah, these spaces have a certain ephemerality around their focus point, and sometimes their time comes up, or sometimes there's a need to do something around a different focus point. Only you can know what's best for you and what you need right now.

So I wish you best luck on your journey, whatever it may be.

It's interesting, my blog also was sexually focused, but when I started writing about things that actually mattered to me, I started liking writing more.

My traffic also went down after I laid off any sex stuff, and particularly when I stopped posting photos.

But anyway, I'm also frustrated by my inability to allow my blog life to overlap with any other part of my life. While you compartmentalize your life in many ways -- your work and private lives, for example -- it's weird to compartmentalize parts of your private life.

For what it's worth, I do get something out of reading your blog. You speak in a distinct voice on it -- it's as though reading your censored and edited thoughts actually does allow me to understand you better. It helps me understand your thought process better.

You know, Syl, i think you're suffering one of those moments every blogger suffers. The funny thing is that it's a little different for each of us, the cause, the details, the reasons. Yet we wind up backed into the same sort of corner and have one of two reactions, 'kill it' or 'walk away'.

In my case, I have much the same feeling you describe in part from time to time for an almost opposite reasons. As an anonymous blogger, you need to protect your identity as so are constrained; as one who blogs under his real name and identity, I am constrained by the fact that my employers can find me, my real life friends and family read me. We're both gagged in minor ways by the possible readers.

The bloggers dilemma; I need to write in a vacuum to be completely, purely honest, yet if I write in a vacuum, blogging itself seems pointless. Because blogs are by definition public, meant to be read. They're not a little book under your pillow with a lock, they're web sites, findable by google and by anyone/everyone.

The reality of readers, then, changes what you write. It's a kind of blogosphere uncertainty principle where observation changes event.

Given this, it's almost inevitable that at some point, the initial joy and freedom of the format will ebb and we wind up in some sense less and less free, more and more backed into that corner.

Hence, the urge to chuck it all.

The thing is, those of us who do this are, in small or large measure, egotistical and dramatic. We couldn't do this unless on some level we wished to have attention. But the same desire for attention lashes back; 'stop looking at me' or 'I need to make a grand statement when I leave', depending on mood and moment. There's a quote I keep meaning to use in a blog entry - and if I ever do stop and tear it down this might be my final entry title:

"The passion for destruction is also a creative passion." --Mikhail Bakunin

This quote, in a sense, captures the desire, not to stop, but to un-make the blog, to burn it down and leave scorched earth behind. It's not just a desire to stop it, it's a desire to stop with a crash and a bang.

I've done this in a tiny way several times - symbolically destroying my blog by deleting the files from my web server and replacing it with a placeholder 'this is gone' page. It makes me feel better for an hour or a day to know it's been, in an almost ritual sense, blown up. What I don't do, though, is to actually remove the data itself. Some day I might do it and leave it gone, but the work itself means too much to me to *really* destroy. And like Elton John's song says, if I kill myself I want to stick around and see what people say.

I don't know what it is that makes artists sometimes wish to destroy their own creation. Ben clearly felt it - burning what is my single favorite of all his paintings. It's perverse. But I've felt it before, the urge to destroy something I'm working on.

All that said, my point of view is that blowing up your own blog is, generally, a bad idea. First of all, unless you have some self-protection reason to do it, the work stands on it's own even if it's done. People out there care, and may have linked to you, and may want to find your work again. Blowing it away takes it from those who might want it, breaks links all over the 'net, and in the end, doesn't achieve a lot. Stop, by all means, for a day or a month or forever, but leave the work as it is. Because while Ben's burning may in effect have produced a new piece of art in that he has the photos of the fire, you or I destroying our blogs produces nothing and removes something that matters in whatever small way.

But if it feels good, do it, and fuck what people think.

I hope you don't go, but I'll understand if you do. I've felt exactly the same things. The need to talk about stuff and to be REAL, but at the same time to stay hidden. And I've wondered, why the fuck can't we talk about the things we need to talk about without caring who reads it? I don't have any answers. But you know I'm here no matter if you stay or if you go or if you choose some compromise between the two.

I feel like you reached into my head and wrote everything I've been thinking for the last few months - regarding blogging anyway. I'm at a crossroads as well - I'm about to move back home, change my life completely, and start all over again. I don't know if blogging has a place in that life.

I feel your pain. Drop me a note if you want to chat about it more. In the meantime, relax and be good to yourself.

I haven't been around in awhile, but it's not on account of any withering of your writing. I like reading you.

I also agree with everyone else. You have to take a break now and then, because writing every day can be exhausting, especially when you write about yourself.

The decision is yours. Maybe try a trail separation. See how you feel in a few weeks. Or, just let it go if that's your wont. Either way, keep visiting others. I always like to read your comments.

Good luck.

I think everyone blogs for a reason, and once that reason is gone, some stop. I still have things to say and life to share, but will I keep going forever, no way. I will get busy in the real world, doing other things. We should enjoy the time we have together now, just like you would in real life, because people move on, die, or change their lives. It's normal.

You will know when its time to stop Syl. Just let us know so we can see you off, ok?

Hey Syl,

I think it's a good thing to want to do something new. Not that I don't enjoy reading your stuff here - but it sounds to me like you're evolving and that's a good, if bittersweet thing! I'm sure everybody wishes you well whatever you choose to do.

At any rate, I don't think you should stick forks anywhere. That would hurt.

xxx N