The many motives of blogging

It seems that blogs bring to mind one of two sorts of person: 1) thinks they have really important things to say and needs a soapbox, 2) wants to "overshare" all the inane trivia of their life with a world who, by and large, doesn't give a fuc*. I don't know exactly how I stumbled onto a blog post about oversharing, but this led me to learning about Lena Chen. This led me to finding out things about her I really didn't want to know (NSFW: or see), but out of it all came a sliver of good, as she wrote something I find strong rapport with:

Part of the reason why I write about my life is because I am scared of not remembering anything about it. I have a terrible memory, no doubt an ironic symptom of childhood bullying that taught me the art of forgetting terrible memories. (Truth: I routinely have problems with recalling things that happened before the age of 12). Unfortunately for me, I never quite unlearned how to forget. Now that I am full-grown and expected to remember things like faces and names, I find myself standing around dumb-founded as all my friends recall events at which everyone but me seems to have been present. I routinely fail to recognize guys with whom I’ve gone on single dates, or even people I went to high school with. It seems I am a spectator to other people’s memories but never the one doing the remembering herself.

And it’s not just memories either. It’s skills like how to use JSTOR (thank you, high school debate) or how to swim (thank you, community pool) that I must relearn because I’ve somehow magically forgotten despite everyone’s insistence that there are some things, like riding a bike, that you remember forever. Well, trust me, if there were ever a person who could forget, it’d be me. In Ibiza, for example, this was precisely my problem. Here I was with miles of unpolluted ocean before me, and I was terrified of wading too far out because I hadn’t swum in years. I was always scared to go into pools as a kid until I braved swimming lessons during early elementary school. Then I promptly forgot and had to learn again, this time during a summer around age 10. I don’t think I’ve really swum again since. Eventually in Ibiza, I gave it a go at a shallow beach but I conceded defeat after several gulpfuls of seawater. This was a performance from someone who used to relish jumping off diving boards several yards above her head.

Although my ability to remember how to do things physically (ride bikes, swim, ride 4wheelers, play ping-pong, pool, &c.) is not a problem, I strongly agree with her motive of wanting to document her life out of fear of forgetting. I found myself last week in my hometown talking to a friend I literally went from K-12 with, and she reminded me of universal remote controls at Richlands Middle School, as well as other funny tales, that I had completely forgotten about.

Now I'll have to write a post just to explicate the details on that.

Blog-as-journal/memoir works for me. I must confess that I have this creepy urge to see how many people would read my blog after I died, and how long people would still find it on the web. In 2000 years, will the internet as it exists today still be archived somewhere? In a million years, will aliens from some far-off system store the entirety of the internet on little cubes and put them on a shelf somewhere?

The status of this blog being private has changed a few times, for a few different reasons:

1. I began writing a blog in Nov 2005. It didn't have many readers. One day, I wrote something on Sternberg and it got linked to, and from there, I had a lot of interest in keeping readers. Some of the original research I did has been incorporated into this article at Expelled Exposed.
   
2. A few people from my hometown, and relatives, learned of my site and I learned of that. I got nervous and made it private. I stupidly deleted a lot of my posts. A lot of this had to do with the fact that I was no longer religious. If you hunger for more details, here they are.
3. I obviously changed my mind and began writing again on a public blog. Once, I realized I was in trouble with getting my Ph.D. finished because of the time I was spending online. We see where that worry took me...
   
4. That trend was fairly unbroken until I graduated from UF and started the job search. Then, I decided to go private again, because I was afraid that parents at my new job would find this site and I would have to deal with a bunch of BS from it.
5. I planned to write less through the work year; I'm pretty much still in that same boat, and my writing over this summer has increased only because of free time. Once my son is born, that won't be an issue.
   

Also, I think I have lots of really important things to say and I need a soapbox.