Category: On Blogging

While writing the English Ed’s site’s description of the Blog project, I came
across this marvelous passage by George Packer. It introduces his article,"The
Revolution Will Not Be Blogged," published in the May/June issue of Mother
Jones. I like Packer’s ambivalence. The article explores the nature of
blog reading more than blog writing (and blog reading in the sphere of political
journalism), with some nicely subtle shades of positives and negatives:

To see beyond their own little world and get a sense
of what’s really
going on, journalists and readers need to get out of their pajamas.

FIRST, A CONFESSION: I HATE BLOGS.
I’m also addicted to them.
Hours dissolve into nothing when I suit up and dematerialize into the,
political blogosphere, first visiting one of the larger, nearer online
opinion diaries–talkingpointsmemo.com, andrewsullivan.com, kausfiles
com–then beaming myself outward along rays of pixelated light to dozens
of satellites and lesser stars, Calpundit, InstaPundit, OxBlog, each one
radiant with links to other galaxies–online newspapers and magazines
with deep, deep archives, think-tank websites, hundred-page electronic
reports in PDF–until I’m light-years from the point of departure and
can rescue myself only by summoning the will to disconnect from the
whole artificial universe. With a jolt, I land in front of my computer.
Before long I’ll venture forth again to see what’s new out
there–because the blogosphere changes from instant to instant.

Hmm….you wouldn’t know it, but I
write the blog all day long with varied and deep and sprawling observations,
reflections, brainstorms, commentaries, speeches Dusty Baker needs to give his
hapless team, solutions for the English Education quandaries, and more, more,
more. But none of it ever seems to make its way into this blog. It’s time for
an entry on why, though I can’t quite seem to nail it, and so I delay. But here’s
a partial list:

• Publication Anxieties: There are many kinds of publication
  anxieties, but I’ll focus on the fear associated with the "public representation
  of one’s writing." I know blogging is supposed to be free and casual,
  "your mind on the Web," your un-spell-checked, un-filtered, un-labored-over
  phenomenological stream and such, but who can be so un-fettered, un-revised,
  un-artificial as all that?
• Loneliness/Privacy: These are opposite pulls. Blogging
  can be so lonely…. There you are, putting your Wisdom o’ Life out there,
  and there it goes, unread, ignored. On the other hand, if the blogging is
  going well, it can get pretty close to the core, so KEEP OUT!
• Trajectory of An Idea: One thing leads to another, till
  it circles back into the Totality of Everything. I start planning these little
  blogs, each of which connects to all these other thoughts, each of which summons
  a plan for new entries. There’s always a master plan lurking. Ah, master plans:
  the motive of all possibilities and nothingness. Coleridge was right: Extremes
  do meet.
• Violating Communication Privilege: This problem originated
  as the simple ethical problem of quoting a friend’s email. It’s really wrong
  to take a friend’s or colleague’s or student’s message and post it on a Web
  site without permission, but the delay of the process, and/or the possibility
  of denial takes all the fun and spontaneity out the whole blog experience.
  Now the problem has expanded into another area. For lately, I’ve felt the
  urge to post email that I’VE composed and sent to friends, students, colleagues.
  Even though I am the "owner" and author of the text, I feel it’s
  a violation to take a message crafted and intended for an individual and re-use
  it for a larger audience. (But so much of our language is re-usable!) So I
  start to wonder: To what extent was the original message itself "dictated"
  by the needs of this alterior/ulterior? rhetorical situation? Just when did
  the thinking that this message might be "re-usable" start creeping
  in? As rhetorical motives flit about during communication, just how do we
  go about sorting through purposes, audiences, and situations? So typically,
  I throw up my hands; I just sit on it, and ignore the whole thing, sigh…
• Get a Life: This journaling, while the best of all things
  (to a teacher of writing…process, process, process…archive, archive, archive,
  which leads to more process, process, process) threatens to take over….
  I mean, who has the time?
• Who the hell cares? I mean, people around me–at home,
  at work, in the community, everywhere–are kind and caring and generous–and
  would read anything I put before them in a heartbeat, but should they really
  be subjected to "inhabit my sprawl"? I mean, we all enjoy our OWN
  sprawl, and it is, to quote Smeagol, "our precious"…but take that
  sprawl out of context, and talk about BORING! Hmm…the sprawl as ring…now
  there’s an idea! Keep posted….
• Perpetual Unfinishedness: Living la vida blog, womb-bred
  blogging–authenticity in blogging–requires comfort with–no, an inhabitation
  of–the attitude of perpetual unfinishedness. Got an idea? Feel a need to
  understand it? to know it? to work with it? to move on with it? Go write a
  final draft. Get thee to a five-paragraph essay! Hence from the blog and blogging
  company! In fragments and false starts and partial finishes and ellipsis marks
  and the perpetual endlessness of things we trust, kinda…

July 8, 2004

It’s safe to say that my worst blogging fears have been realized. :) I started blogging last summer when I was nearing the completion of my online dossier, but I was worried I would start off with a bang and then just let the thing go…. I had good intentions, but after a few intense posts, I hit a minor roadblock, and never bothered to find a way around it. And now I’m here with my second blogging foray, a year later.

I wonder: Just how many hell-paved roads of good intentions by me and others have been barricaded by such minor inconveniences?

Could it be that my motivation is not pure? That I’m not a genuine blogger, with blogging in the bones? That blogging is an exercise for me that I’m trying on, but don’t really “feel it” the way true believers do, the way that those who have blogged in the womb do? Such a question seems appropriate to ask at at a time like this.

One of my motivations for coming back here, I’ll confess, is blatantly impure: For, from my students I found how effective “impure blogging” can be. I coerced my methods students last semester to keep a blog, and I was so inspired–maybe not always by what they wrote, but by the possibilities unveiled by what and how they wrote. They wrote their blogs as an assignment, under the threat of some kind of eventual grade–but still there is some meatiness, some soul, some blogging essence there. If they could do it and produce some valuable results….

Another opening thought–a technology lesson here: Yes, this is my second attempt in actual blog writing, but blogging is something that has been rolling over in my mind for at least three years now, since Megan Hughes and I first heard about it at a conference at Northern Illinios University. Meg was mildly intrigued, and came right back and started her own blog. And I pledged to myself to think about it. There is much to say and enjoy about Meg’s wry sense of humor in those early postings, as she quizzically relayed both the importance and silliness of the new medium. But my point here is about process. The blog that you are reading here started then, and needed all the intervening time and false starts and ephemeral ruminations. I find that ALL worthwhile technology projects for me require a similar process of “living with” an idea, a set of possibilities, several trials by error. Technology demands a coming to it on its terms–a submission–a type of “Negative Capability,” to put it in the Keatsian terms that appeals so to my English bones and breeding. Technology, when it fascinates me, does so because of the lessons about learning, life, and process it sets into motion. I think that many people who have antipathy for technology do so on this level: the technology is requiring a “living with,” a process, a reflective approach to purposes and methods–whereas the individual just wants to get something done, and on his or her terms. The individual is not looking for a “living with” (as in “inhabit the sprawl”)–he or she just wants to write a memo, send an email, crop a picture–just get something done.

SO…what was that road block in August of 2003? It was a copyright, intellectual property, decency in friendship issue. My friend and mentor, Julie McNellis, and I had been corresponding about my online dossier–its process, its lessons, its potential as an example, etc. A spat of emails were filled with “oh-oh-oh” moments, as we looked ahead and schemed. So in my enthusiasm, I just wanted to copy and paste letter after letter into the blog. But even then, I knew better. But to ask for permission? Julie would give it in a heartbeat, but that heartbeat might take a week or so to communicate. Another technology lesson: The slightest inconvenience is a deal-breaker. Or conversely, the great convenience of email and Web access is the tech deal-maker of all time.

Another reason for my blogging false start of last year: I didn’t have the GREAT bBlog software that I now have. bBlog is now installed on the English server, and its features provide the missing ingredients whose absence left last year’s experience hollow or incomplete. bBlog enables sorting and meta-tagging of entries. Now a blogger can grow a set of reflections over time in categories. Thus, with a little planning, the blogger can create an organized archive. My excitement for the central English Education assignment–the Programmatic Agenda–grows and grows at the thought of students being able to record their reflections, learning, information, Web sites, etc. in easily-sorted categories.

Anyway, the thing is started again. May it flourish!