I am, by my very nature, a lurker.* I'm the consummate wallflower, a constant observer absorbing everything I can about the world around me. But while I comment in my own head about what I observe, I don't really feel the need to comment out loud. I read articles, I follow blogs, I read Twitter posts, but I don't say anything because a) website comment sections are truly scary and b) why? For much the same reason that Prof. Groom doesn't feel the need to get a cellphone, I don't feel the need to comment. Who am I to say anything about what anyone else says? So I lurk, learning and retaining mountains of largely useless information.**
Which is directly contradicted by the fact that I've been blogging for nearly 10 years. I started on deadjournal.com and slowly made my way to Blogger in February of 2005. I can search within that blog for nearly ever major landmark event in my life and can give an approximate date to when those things happen. I lay bare for anyone who wants to read it, my entire life in that blog. While I'm embarrassed by four or so years of what I wrote about, anyone*** can read about my avid fangirliness for a number of topics during that time simply by googling the right terms. But how does this effect anything outside my personal life? It doesn't. I blog to keep a record of my life so that when I get older I can look back and remember what I was like when I was fifteen, twenty, twenty-five. Alzheimer's runs in my family, so I would like to know that for better or worse there's a record of my doings for people to remember me by. Because as much as I lurk, I still want to be remembered.
So what of academia? In as much as I blog about anything, I blog about my classes. I don't blog about each of my classes to the extent that I suspect Prof. Groom will be wanting us to blog about this class, but I do talk about what I'm doing in school. Of all the things we'll be expected to do, I suspect for me that blogging about every step I take in this class will be the hardest thing to do.
I don't blog as much as I use to for many reasons. The biggest hope I have for this class is that I will start blogging more because I'll be inspired to blog more, instead of because I feel bad or whatever. And now, just to prove a point, here's a bunch of media stuff. Enjoy.
(one of my favourite videos of all time)
[caption id="attachment_28" align="alignnone" width="202" caption="Provided by thefilmstage.com"]
[/caption] (one my favourite movies that I saw last year)*In classic internet parlance. Other synonyms include leech, which is probably accurate to a certain extent.
**Or useless at this point in time. Perhaps sometime in the future the useless things I know will be handy. I doubt it, but you never know.
***I've actually thought this through, at least in certain aspects and I just hope that no one looking to hire me figures out that the crazy blog they're looking is written my yours truly. Because if they ever did, there's a good chance no one would hire me.
2 comments:
Nora,
In many ways I want this space to be where you figure out what you want to talk about and why. What does inspire you? Well, blog about it. I mean your blogging when you were in England was unbelievable, you're a natural, and your love of media may very well be your in for ds106 and making blogging fun again, not academic. That's what happened for me with bavatuesdays.com. I said screw it, I'll write about what gets me excited, and it worked, what's more, others who have similar interests found me. That's enough, it does';t have to be great, just mine and honest, an when it is no longer fun, well then, it's time to start. My real fear is that people will blog out of a sense of duty rather than wonder.
I used to blog a lot too to remember things that I would probably have forgotten (my memory is terrible!)
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