I Have No More Faith In Blogging Than I Do A Hammer. Blogging Is A Vehicle. It Is A How.

I've been going through my email inbox, and I mean really going through it back to emails I haven't cleared out since 2007, and, while I've been weeding through hundreds of bits of digital detritus, I've come across some really interesting bits and pieces of my life from the last handful of years.


I took this photo during a Pathfinders session at BlogHer '11 in San Diego.

One e-mail from June 2010 stands out for me, in particular, because it reminds me about why I'm here in the blogging arena and why I still love what I do. I've chosen to remove the author's name and tell-tale details to preserve confidentiality:

Okay, girl. I need to ask you. Where does your faith in blogging come from? I can't seem to muster it... I spend hours trolling online for amazing writing, and I rarely find it. Yet, people will share and discuss and comment and promote pieces that are really poorly written just because someone discloses something taboo or irreverent. It's like we applaud mediocrity all the time online. Now, don't get me wrong there are pockets of brilliance, you, kate, maggie, xtx, conscienceround, bhj, and a bunch of other. But, I see a lot of branding and bravado. The worst part, when you criticize any of it people just assume you are jealous or fearful. It makes me crazy. I don't know. I want to see the good in it. But, everywhere I turn people just seem to be following each other blindly without thought. It feels so obvious and at times desperate. I just want to write. I just want to participate in communities where people really love the written word. I don't feel that online. Maybe, it's me. Maybe it is all my own fault. I don't know.

Why do you love it? Don't you ever shake your head at any of it?

Here is my unedited reply:

You know what? I see inauthenticity at every I turn, too. It's bound to happen. Just look out at the world. People can be really lame, and they are, all the time. People often rise to meet only the lowest bar required to show signs of success.

It's like with children. Their answers to questions usually meet their perceived needs of the question. If you ask them how fast a car was going when it bumped the other car, they will say that it was going pretty fast. If you ask them how fast the car was going when it smashed really hard into that other speeding car, they will jump around and tell you about flying shrapnel. I think we are doing the same with success as bloggers. Most of us are merely meeting the perceived requirements of the question and not pushing ourselves further than the needs of that question or even questioning the question itself.

There is bound to be a lot of laziness, hard work, hacks, shining talents, inauthentic dweebs, and people who put their heart and soul into it, but I would never look at blogging as a whole and then say I don't feel love of the written word there or originality or thoughtfulness. I can't take any book off a bookstore shelf and say that the writing in it is even decent. I cannot look at the human race and say I say I see humanity in all of it, but here we are, and we still try to tease out the bits of us that work on this planet. That's what I try to do sometimes with stuff like Grace In Small Things to help people remember to stop being awful and this thing to try to introduce some thoughtfulness to our blogging.

One big problem with blogging is that we can drop in and find it rife with douchebags any day of the week, but that is generally the problem with life outside the internet, too. I try to avoid the douchebags and focus on those who further themselves and their craft. It's not about putting blinders on and more like learning to live on the internet the way I live out in the real world where people are just as brilliant and awful. I choose who I'll hang out with, where I want to go, how I want to present myself, and who I'll invest my care and time into.

I have no more faith in blogging than I have faith in a hammer or a car's engine. Blogging is a vehicle. I do have faith, though, at least to a certain extent, in myself and some of those I find here. I have faith in certain individuals and individual talent. Blogging, though? That's just the how.

So, why do I love it? Because I love how I do it and some others that I've found. Do I ever shake my head at any of it? Hells yeah.

I Am A Doubleplus Cheesehead And A Letter To Someone Who Used To Own A Second-Hand Book I Bought

Since I don’t usually update two days in a row, I will give you an opportunity to head back to yesterday’s third instalment of my crazy chronicles to peruse at your liesure.

I wrote this stupid letter to someone I don’t even know, and regardless of the nerdiness of the endeavour, I have chosen to post it here for all to read. Why? Because we’ve all wondered where those second-hand books we buy once lived, who held them, what that person might have thought of the book. So, I wrote Vivien J. Pritchard a letter. Vivien J. Pritchard could be dead, have moved away, be a male, be a female, I have no idea. It’s almost like making somebody up. Anyway, I mailed this thing last week. I addressed it to “to whom it may concern” and left the name off the front of the envelope just so that whoever lives at the address opens it, be they a Vivien or not. I’m curious about whether I will receive a reply or not. Somehow it would be way cooler if someone other than Vivien wrote back.

To whom it may concern:

I am not sure at all how to begin such a letter, so I will start by way of introducing myself. My name is Schmutzie, and I live in Cityville, Provinceplace. My reason for writing to you is a simple one. I was in a used book shop several months ago in Cosmopolis and picked out a copy of Doris Lessing’s The Memoirs of a Survivor.

Today, I was looking along my bookshelves, trying to decide which book I would read next, when I came across this one. I had almost forgotten that I had bought it, and I had to dust it off before opening the cover. Inside, on the very first page, the one on which the Houston Chronicle or the New York Times Book Review proclaim the book’s greatness, was rubber stamped a name and an address. I prefer used books over new, and so I have come across people’s names, wellwishings, and old hand-printed prices many times and wondered who these people were. This time around, I thought, why not? Why not write Vivien J. Pritchard of Anotherspot, Provincelot a note?

So, here I am. You are likely wondering why I would bother to write a letter to someone I have never met from a place I have never been who may not even live there anymore. It’s simple. I am only part way through the book, but I have already been thoroughly drawn in by it. Had The Memoirs of a Survivor not been in the used book store in Cosmopolis on that weekend when I happened to be visiting, I probably never would have had the joy of reading it. Thank you. Thank you for being a link in the series of events that put it on my bookshelf.

Sincerely,
Schmutzie

P.S. If you are reading this and you are not Vivien J. Pritchard, I am not surprised. My particular edition of the book came out in 1976, so Mr. or Mrs. Pritchard could be anywhere by now.