New Beginnings

This is the last post I will write that will count for a grade. Whether or not the absence of a class will really end this blog is yet to be determined. Now that the pressure is off, I’m starting to get into it, but we’ll see if that survives the summer. But, as the blog and internet goes, I’ll have it for as long as it doesn’t get deleted, so it is also conceivable that I might come back to it after a little while if I fall off the wagon. It will exist even if it ceases to live, or something. All that said, with my own commencement only days away, I wanted to write a new beginning for this project; a new proposal to think about the principle questions that I was asked at the beginning of the semester when it began:
What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
From reflecting on the posts I’ve made thus far, in addition to the articles I read, and recollections of meetings with my professor, I have begun to re-envision the purpose of this project, my blog, and what I want it to be.

At once I want it to be a place where I can remember to try to be in play —in the sense of questioning, re-imagining, deconstructing, thinking about, deriving meaning from and engaging with — texts. Right now that means specifically with the blog text, and might grow to mean the internet text, or the whole Text with a capital T. Baby steps. Hopefully this will help me learn what it means to be in play, to get to the place where I don’t know where I’m going. I want it to be a place where I can be in the constant state of “working it out,” so much so that it becomes play and never gets worked out. I want the experience of the play to be mediated through this blog. This will hopefully help fulfill another goal that I have for it, which is that it will serve as an outlet for me to maintain a rich intellectual life after college. Though I don’t think the tone will be quite the same as being academic, I want to remember to think about things the way I thought about them in college, and have practice thinking about them this way after I am no longer in this kind of environment. Hopefully this will stem the flow of forgetting, and even if I’m not writing papers anymore, at least I can still think about things.

I will continue to write about blogs and blogging, but with newfound knowledge and a little bit of insight. At this point I’m more interested in looking at blogging as a practice and how it exists within (what once was) a tangible textual framework of paper and limited dimension. I want to look more at internet theory, or at least the theory behind the internet text, and think about if it relates to the theory that came before, as well as how it might. I’m still interested in my writing problem, and mastery of text, so some of what I write about will probably be about HOW to write. A new vision of writing. But, while I keep the theory I want to write more thoroughly about blogs. I want to read them, keep track of them, think about their content, become hooked on them. I learned how to read books before I learned how to talk about books, and I watched movies before I learned how to talk about movies: it follows that I should read blogs before I can learn how to talk about them. I want to look at what the blogs mean for the theory and what the theory means for the blogs, and become a discourse. From this it seems that I cannot have one without the other: I don’t want either to exist in a void without the other. I want the chicken and the egg.

In terms of the kinds of blogs I want to read… I am still interested in the personal blog, how it functions as a memory space and a representation of the self, public versus private, orality versus textuality, etc., etc., etc. At this point, I am more interested in looking at why people say they do it, what it means for their self-understanding, and the self-conscious reasoning behind starting an online diary, because I think not accounting for the personal reasons why people do what they do (or at least, why they think they do what they do) would be a bit hypocritical, at this point. Part of the interest lies in my feeling that this project in the hands of other people for other reasons would turn out differently, and I think the same goes for any blog, but especially for something so personally motivated as a diary. People’s diaries are all the same (essentially, maybe) but I think there is something so fundamental in dairy writing and memory recording that is located in the reasoning behind the preservation, the compulsion to do it in the first place.

I’m also interested in reading more blogs like mine, blogs about blogging and other blogs. Sort of like the blogs written by academics like I’ve talked about before, but also just reviews of blogs, about blog culture, blog posting, and the world of the blog in general. I mean, this is a meta-blog. It could be a meta blog about other meta blogs and be the ultimate meta. Hehe. I’m also starting to get interested in blogs about other media like movies or TV, and blogs with references to pop culture. I don’t think I’ll be completely indiscriminate about them, but I think my breadth of interest will be sufficintely represented on the blog as I write about them (meaning that if I think something is really interesting, I’ll write about it a lot). At this point, I feel like if I’m going to be overwhelmed then I might as well be properly overwhelmed. Lately I’ve been thinking about it like going to browse in a huge bookstore and not knowing where to start, but just going, and not feeling so much pressure because it isn’t like the books are going to disappear. This is a little different because there are (I think) way more, in a really consolidated place, and one can lead to another and lead to another, deeper and deeper forever and infinity. But… they aren’t going to disappear. So I’ll be able to read the ones I want and pass up the ones I don’t like.

In terms of the future of the blog in general, if I want to do things the way I’ve outlined above, I really need to post more. A blog can exist with infrequent posts, but if I want this to basically be a mediated thought process of text in play, then it definitely won’t do to post so infrequently. Maybe that will work if I’m not thinking about it a lot, or… the blog will become something else entirely, which I also want to remain possible. However, if I do keep up with it and want it to grow, maybe I’ll learn some basic HTML and make it look pretty. Or at least prettier. Or at least so people can see the blogs I read. I wouldn’t want it to be overwhelming, but perhaps not so sparse. I also would want to start commenting on other people’s blogs, in the hopes that maybe they would comment on mine. It could turn into a conversation between bloggers, their blogs, and their text.

Even though this isn’t at all what I imagined happening with this project, I’m satisfied with the way that it turned out. I like the idea that having a problem with something doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m an idiot. I’m starting to dig the sort of quizzical look at the world and how it’s interesting, and how the different ways one looks and processes media is just interesting, a subject onto itself, and doesn’t say anything about me as a person. I’ll probably be working that one around for a little bit more, but at least now I’ll have someplace to do that. Also, I’m used to big huge hard projects being really stressful; if it isn’t stressful, I might be doing it wrong. And while this stressed me out quite a bit for awhile, I feel like I got over it. I’m about to push the ‘publish’ button and I’m not freaking out. It’s a nice feeling.

And with all that, I am done with college. Thanks for reading this big long post. So commences the rest of my life, with my blog in tow…