I mean for this blog to be a pretty comprehensive look at me and my life. Not for the sake of the people reading and not because I’m trying to keep a record of my life to look back at later. I don’t know why exactly, because it isn’t conscious. It was just something I realized one day when it seemed I’d written too many abstract posts in a row with nothing to ground them in the life I’m really living day to day.
I think it goes back to my original motivation for starting a blog: I wanted to be known. I’m an introvert, so much of my life is lived in my head. But, as a result of habits I’d been building since middle school, I’d become anonymous in my own life. I’ve never been good at communicating myself. Sometimes I even have to be reminded of just how much I enjoy other people. I felt that something was missing in the life I’d created for myself, so when I found blogging as an outlet, I gravitated toward it for reasons that weren’t clear to me then.
When I say I wanted to be known, what I mean is that I wanted people to know more about me than my research interests and the schools where I’d earned my degrees and the places I work now. More even than the music I listen to and the TV shows I watch. I wanted to be known in my complexity as a girl with a lot of dreams who regularly contradicts herself. That meant sharing all of myself and not just the surface level things. I’d never been hiding anything; I’d just never learned to talk about myself.
Mostly as a matter of circumstance, I have since grown significantly less anonymous in my real life, but I still feel more on my blog than anywhere else, this desire to represent myself as completely as possible. So many of the things I never thought I’d share are now part of the archives and I’m known by more people than I anticipated. I still wrestle with how to write things so they best express exactly how I feel. Not because I value honesty as a principle, but because I want to be known as the person I am.
There are things about sharing my life that have surprised me. Like, it doesn’t matter how clearly you think you’re expressing yourself, sometimes people will still misunderstand you. And, it doesn’t matter how well you think you know yourself and how precisely you put that into words, people will still pick up on the unwritten things that you missed even in a life of introspection.
No matter how comprehensive I try to be, some things always get left out. There are the few things (very few, these days) I purposefully remain silent on, the things I forget about myself, and the others I just assume are understood. What’s strangest to me is how far I extend beyond my writing and how all the different things I share about myself combine to create a picture of me that is just as varied and inconsistent as I really am.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I like how you seem to understand that not everything about a person necessarily squares with everything else. A lot of people just don’t get that.
I like that distinction you made between “hiding” and never learning to talk about yourself. It’s a tricky thing and I don’t think people are encouraged, also because a lot of people don’t know how to really HEAR about someone else.
But I think that, because you are varied and what you write about and you do hide some things (but not others), this does become a good… extension (?) of who you are, because that’s essential to what it means to be human (ugh, that sounds so philosophical).
I really enjoyed this post. And you’re right – no matter how clear we think we are being, there are always some people who will misunderstand us. I think it’s just the result of different personality types – e.g. I naturally am very emotionally sensitive, and easily find the best way of dealing with some situations is to jump up and down, clapping my hands with excitement, or curl up under the bedcovers, in the dark, crying my eyes out – I’m a person of extremes and these sorts of things seem natural to me, yet other people are wired completely differently – what seems so clear and natural to us is often completely misunderstood by others simply because everyone is wired differetly. It’s our differences and how we deal with misunderstandings that make us unique and interesting and propel us forward :)
You are one of the most fascinating people I know. I want to know more. I want to have a beer with you and talk about life. You intrigue me
I find it easier to express myself in writing, especially in terms of my humour. I think my blog was not just about wanting people to know more about me, but perhaps for them to realise I’m funny.
But while I generally reveal more on my blog than I do in real life, there are other things I consider too sacred to mention on here and will ONLY talk about in real life . . . it’s a strange balance but it seems to work.
I agree with Pham’s sentiment. You’re extremely fascinating and I can’t help but be drawn to your writing, mostly because it is about you and your life. I hope I get to meet you someday.
Amen to that! You are known to us, the blogging world! You’re an amazing writer…don’t ever stop writing!
I totally understand how you feel about wanted to be known – but being shy & an introvert. I’m the same way, and it does perplex me.
I think it is a fundamentally human thing to want to be known. The act of writing is clearly a strong part of your everyday life, so it seems natural that you would express yourself in this sort of forum.
I feel lucky to be getting to know you in this way.
There are days where I write posts and then question whether readers will understand what I’m really saying. I am not fully certain of how I am perceived. I’ve got the most biased seat in the house. What comes across as one emotion to me could mean something entirely different to someone else. It’s a struggle to convey all your emotions, thoughts, and other aspects of yourself through a textual medium. I wind up with some wacky posts sometimes, but all I can hope for is for readers to see me underneath all that babble and text.
As a relatively “new” blogger (or, one who’s trying to start anew) it’s good to know that this vision of the “perfect” blogger isn’t so. I think I started a blog years ago to try to put all the pieces of myself together—to try and make some sense of myself, and I failed miserably. Now that I’m starting again it gives me some hope!
I could have written this post. Thanks for writing what I feel on an almost daily basis. Through writing my blog, I’ve found that I’ve become more of myself, if that makes any sense. Writing lets me put my thoughts and emotions out there in ways that I didn’t share before, which in turn gave me a better understanding of who I am as a person, my truest self, perhaps.
totally agreed with that bit about the unwritten stuff – sometimes it’s not so much what we’re saying, but what we’re not saying, right?