Love in the Age of World Domination

Open Expression: Gift or Curse?

"...Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand..." (the Skin Horse)

And that says it all for me. Being Real is beautiful. Its the only thing that matters in the long run. Also, once  you know everything about me how can you not fully love me?  Unless of course you "don't understand me" This explains why I freely express myself, and why I need to write honestly, and often very personally. A need to share, to be understood. Fully. Because not to be understood feels lonely and threatening.

An extreme depth of feeling and sensitivity that needs creative expression. Mostly a gift. Often a blessing. but sometimes a curse.

The reason I this came up today is because I have been hearing quite a bit about the potential downside of online emotional nakedness. That it is not strategic. That it is not smart. That I must put up screens, filters, and walls to protect, conceal, and manage the flow of information about me.

The problem is that for me, to play different characters to different audiences, is artificial and often disingenuous. Who am I trying to impress? No one but myself. Hence I require, no I demand, unity of self. Emotional congruency. I consider intense emotional experiences as being vital to a full life. Especially to a writing life. Its not for nothing that "bleeding heart romantic" appears in the sub-title of this blog.

Spontaneous personal authenticity, and the intention, at least, to always be  "real" is fundamentally critical to Who I Am. Now I will agree with the naysayers that my desire to be real, at all times, with all people, could be dangerous. I know. But I can also taste the danger of losing touch with my real feelings. To ask me to ignore this inner conflict would be like to ask Luke Skywalker to ignore the conflict between good versus evil.

The dark side must be reckoned with, but good ultimately triumphs over bad, and love over hate. Or something like that.

But ok. I will stop writing personal posts, and write high-brow intellectual posts only. 

Bad Blogger I am

I know I know I know. I am a bad blogger. And you want to move on. You have probably already removed me from your favorite links. Although, thats probably a little presumptuous of me to assume that I was on your favorites to begin with. Still, a girl's gotta have an ego in this cut-throat new media dominated world (Not). Fine, ok, go if you really want to. But then you'll never hear about how am quiting my job and moving to Africa, or about this insanely hot encounter with an Argentinian man last weekend. Ok. Fine. So maybe that didn't happen. ...   but I might move to Africa?

The funny thing is that I even have a personal content finder, who has been responsible for the last two posts. Regardless, I am still struggling...  hmm...all this catholic guilt over my failure to write for you is making me feel tired..  ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz a bit of a nap would be nice right now.

2 hours later... (and that explains where a lot of my time goes).

What I was trying to say is that my life is just full of too much stuff (which, you'd think would be perfect - because that is what provides the aspiring blogger with material.. but with me 'stuff' just means distraction). First there's been the new baby niece for whom I have been creating photo albums and helping find a suitable name. I also have to attend to the requests of the new parents of that baby niece with regards to the latest parenting books, and indulge the new father who wants to discuss the merits of attachment parenting versus the Gina Ford school. And tomorrow I fly to Wales to see little Ayushi Eva Fernando, who was registered as a subject of Her Majesty the Queen just this morning. Kind of ironic given the well documented anti-empire instincts of both grandfathers and the father, that the baby still managed to end up being a subject of HM. Three months later and she would have been a socialist, third-world baby.

Then there's writing class, where I have had to mine my incredibly fascinating life for just one short story idea. Should I write about moving to Switzerland from Sri Lanka at age 11, but no, that was too traumatic an experience, and I am just not ready to go there. After all the point of the writing exercise is to discover a light-hearted personal anecdote to write about, and not to go dredging up memories of cold dark black as night depressions. Should I write about my I-am-going-to-move-to-America-and-reinvent-myself epiphany back in 2001. Naaa... too common, too chick-lit. So I am still working on that..

Then there's spinning class. I used to do a real professional spinning class, like once a month, back in my Philly MBA days (can you believe that I had MBA classmates who did spinning 3 times per week?- that is when I first understood the meaning of goal-setting and ambition MBA-style). Anyway so I joined a class last week -a rather mild one taught by a funny Welsh lady with an eccentric collection of music. 

And then there's friends to see, coffee to have, goat birthdays to celebrate, new episodes of Lost to see, and.. and.. I haven't even mentioned work. You know that place I am supposed to be for 8 hours a day.

So there you have it - a glimpse into where the bloody time goes and why I can't squeeze out one miserable little blog post every day.

Who let the Blogs out?

Four years ago if you wanted to publish on the web you had to have a webpage - ie. you needed to know a little about web design and HTML. Few People were truly serious about writing on the web. This was before blogspot, flikr, permalinks, and pings.

Today creating a new blog only takes 2 minutes. So from political pundits to angsty 14-year-olds, it seems everyone has a blog - everyone, and their mother, and their dog. Even my nigerian cab driver told me the other day that he has a blogs. Technorati monitors 5 millions blogs. Have you ever checked out the top 100 - these sites get thousands of hits a day. Some of the authors make enough money from blogging alone that they can live off their blogs.

What is this - the new New Journalism? A new art form? An ego trip?

I've asked myself why I do it.  Part of it is that its a creative outlet, a form of art therapy for me after a day at work. But it is also a way to document the thoughts and feelings at different stages in my life, and I try to write about topics that are common to other people my age. Finally it is also a way to make enemies and iriitate people..  just kidding. Hopefully it will be a way to make friends and influence people once I become good at it.

So what will make your blog worth reading and attract mad traffic to it? The key, as far as I  have read, is good content, frequently updated, and delivered in a unique voice.  How to Build a Better Blog.