Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Edits, Continued

I can't stop thinking about this concept of blog-as-definition-of-the-self.  Questions have been gallivanting through my head very mischievously.  What is motivating this blog?  What does it want to say?

The first question is easy to answer: life.  As Disney-Channel-cheesy as that is, it's true.  Life is motivating this blog.  I'm inspired by so many things, including the daily and the banal, and I want to share it all with you.  I want to share my life with you!  Not because I think it's extraordinary - it's not - but because it is an adventure, and adventures are worth sharing.

The second question is harder to answer.  The blog wants to say everything.  It is galumphing and tearing on into the wild wonderful in a way that I don't always control.  That sounds funny, doesn't it?  Shouldn't I be able to decide what I write?  Well, yes, I should, but no, I can't, mostly because I don't know what I want the mission if this blog to be.  The blog is writing itself, not I it.

That should be okay.  It is essentially okay, I think.  There's nothing wrong with a blog having a life of its own.  I should be okay with that.  I think I can be okay with that.  I just need to get used to the idea.

I've been going back over my Paris blog these past few hours (I am funemployed now, you know, and am a lady of leisure) and wondering why I didn't feel metaphysically stressed out and exhilarated by writing that blog.  I think it may be because I hadn't discovered the world of blogging - the community of bloggers that I now know and love.  It was a very private blog, read only by family and close friends.  And the blogs I read, for the most part, were written by family and friends.  They knew who I was, and I didn't have to struggle to define myself.

I guess that having a blog is like going to a new place and reinventing yourself - or, at least, having the opportunity to reinvent yourself.  The problem is, I don't want to reinvent myself.  I just want to be myself!  That shouldn't be hard, right?  I generally know who I am - this really shouldn't be hard.

AHA!  Aha.  I have had a revelation, just now, while typing.  All of these questions of identity - they're springing from the state of limbo in which I currently find myself (and no, I haven't heard anything from the consulate regarding my visa).  I'm so excited to begin my new life in London and, to a certain extent, I'm excited to end this chapter of my life here in DC.  The problem is, I'm living in a protracted ending, and that is not good for me!  I don't know how to define myself through this blog because I don't know how to define myself in this in-between-place of frustration and yargh.  I think - I hope - that means that when I get to London (or at least when I know what the [expletive] is going on with my visa) this blog and I will both have more focus.

Man.  I apologize for the meta-ness of this post.  If you've gotten this far, congratulations.  (And if you've gotten this far, can you tell me if you wonder about these things, too, please?)

I'm not a butterflies girl - sorry, Mariah Carey - but I do like this print that I found while browsing Etsy.  Translated, it says: "It is never too late to be whom you want to be."  The message seemed appropriate for today.

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