Response to "Why I Blog"

In the essay, "Why I Blog", author (or blogger, so to speak,) Andrew Sullivan talks about the contrasts between writing published journals and writing a blog entry. Blogs are "spontaneous expressions of instant thought," where journal articles are rehearsed, reviewed and re-edited, (because you can never edit just once.) Blogs are "colloquial" and "unfinished," where articles are professional and polished. Blogs are "personal" to the author, who often fills his posts with emotional opinions about topics. Readers come to know the author quite deeply -- and often relate to the author on a friendly, equal level, where columnists are removed from their work, hiding any personal bias and sometimes not even signing their names.

The ironic thing about the contrast between those two styles of writing, is that while I'm sitting here typing my response, I find myself pausing, thinking, contemplating, deleting, rewording, deleting again, and carefully picking the words I keep. Which, according to Mr. Sullivan, or Andrew (depending on if I'm referring to him as the columnist or the blogger, respectively,) is the exact opposite of what a blog should be. If I were to write this response in "proper blog manner," it would be filled with intense emotional appeals, relateable humorous anecdotes, a few spelling errors (from typing so fervently,) and ultimately, it would be left without a conclusion. And for two reasons: first, a blog is a "draft" of sorts. The author hasn't had time to revise his or her work, and perhaps, never will.  After all, a blog entry is a snapshot in time, showing exactly how the author feels about a subject, and perhaps the author hasn't quite finished his ponderings yet, and the conclusion is to be posted in a different entry. And also, a post might be conclusion-less because as Andrew has pointed out, a blog post is merely the start of a conversation, or the budding of an opinion; it is not the end-all of all knowledge. Perhaps, the blogger is waiting to finish his thoughts, and is opening his post up for discussion among his followers. Maybe one of his followers holds the answer to the blogger's ponderable question that the author would have never thought of by himself.

To keep this post in non-blog fashion, I end with a conclusion: I hope I can learn to blog properly. Emotionally. Opinionated. I hope I can learn to read an article and know instantly how I feel about it, with little time wasted to discover my thoughts, hidden away. My high school English teacher always pleaded to my class, "Tell me you love this book or tell me you hate this book, but never tell me you don't know how you feel." I hope I can learn to know how I feel. I also hope to learn to let others influence how I feel, much like a reader responding to a blog post, I hope to let my peers challenge my views and in that, push me to see what my views actually are.

So, here's to a new year, a new way of learning. And here's to blogging.

Welcome!

As I sat at my desk trying to think of a half-way decent name for this blog that has been inherently thrust upon me, I hit a mental block. Yes, a block before I even started. Every name I came up with was either very, very lame, or very, very cheesy. (Or already taken, but that's besides the point.) As I complained my naming woes to my hallmates, one of them suggested, "Why don't you just call it "Lame and Cheesy?" ... And thus my blog was born.

So, here begins the digital documenting of small insights into the brain of a first year Communication, Culture, and Media major. Considering I'm a female art student surrounded by a sea of male engineers, hopefully my writings will be far more insightful and far less cheesy than the title of my blog.