Sunday, May 28, 2006

i must admit something--i like reading blogs (and online diaries, which i am conflating here). i think i've mentioned this before, but i'm just fascinated by the notion of individuality (a poor word choice, but go with me here!). the first time i really recall thinking about it, i must have been about three, sitting in the hallway upstairs around mothers day. i was thinking about how i loved my mother so much that i wished i could just melt into her. and then i thought, 'no, wait. then i wouldn't be me any more, so i wouldn't be loving her, i'd just be nothing at all. i'd better just love her from here, and make her a nice card or something.' (i know, heavy thoughts for a pre-kindergartner, but i seem to have a lot more memories of that period of my life than most people--i go back to two and a half, before my brother was born, and the memories are so stupid i know they're not of the story-told-so-often-you-think-you-actually-remember-it-but-
you-don't genre. no one tells stories about carpeting patterns or places where you were playing with a specific toy when someone came to visit. but i digress!)

ever since that moment of realization,i've been fascinated by the life going on in other peoples' heads. no matter how well i may do it, every time i ascribe an attitude or a desire or a motivation to someone else, i am just making it up. they may well NOT feel the way i would, but instead act according to their own understanding of the situation, which simply happens to be contiguous with the way i would act if i felt the way i ascribe to them. every person is a walking, talking black box, output visible but mechanism unreachable. and i feel like blogs are a little glimpse into that otherwise un-glimpse-able place, the inside of someone else's head. when people write (when i write) online, it gives them a place to explain the thought process behind any given action. they may not always explain the action fully, leaving you with the opposite of that black box, or they may give you enough of both for understanding, but what you're getting is the way they felt in the moment of posting. and the longer someone keeps up a blog, the better the understanding of their thought processes they give you, so that you can begin to see who they are and why they do what they do. this is one of the reasons why, when i find a blog i think is particularly well-written or enjoyable, i will go through and read it all, from start to last update, getting to know the author as a person who was interesting and entertaining in the scope of their own life--or so i thought.

i was reading an entry recently where the author, after an extremely difficult year both personally and professionally, was applying for a new job, a job that she knew was absolutely perfect for her: something she would not only love to do, but also something she was extremely well qualified for and would do very well, in a place she and her husband wanted badly to move to. and in the interval between that post, and the next one, where she hadn't gotten the job, i knew she was going to get it. there was no doubt in my mind that in any proper narrative structure, our heroine would get the job she wanted and deserved so badly. and that is the problem. because of the fact that in most cases i have never met and will never meet the authors, and the fact that they are written with style (the ones i read are, at least!), blogs read like serialized novels. i expect them to have plotlines that make sense, themes that arise and are dealt with, climaxes and realizations, and points: i want to know how the story ends. and this extends to the writers themselves, who are no less looking for meaning in their own lives than the readers. they are simply looking for the meaning behind the events that happen to them instead of the meaning of their own actions (usually), and they end up making their lives into a narrative to find that meaning. this is, i think, why so many bloggers have been getting book contracts recently- because if you can figure out a way to give yourself an ending, or at least a pausing point, you can make your life appear, and possibly feel, both meaning- and pllot-ful.
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