Something Different The painful, necesarry practice of anti-blogging
I am a person with contradicting feelings – bright joy and biting pain, warm contentment and rattling loneliness – you know, I’m fully human like you. I have opinions, ideas, beliefs, thoughts that change and contradict; I want to write about all of these here.
But this is not a blog. No.
As much as it hurts me to say it: I don’t want this place to be another conveyor belt of pretend thoughtful conversation organized by tags and time-stamped to show that it’s “fresh” and “new.” No matter the intentions, the internet has shown itself to be a terrible place for real, thoughtful conversation. Maybe. I don’t know. But I haven’t seen much good from it. So I’ll write in the most clear and not-overly-wordy way I know how; even when I want to talk about the deeper, brainy things, I will try to be clear.
I am breaking the system?
The System Breaker, wielding his mighty Hammer of Ego… Er… I mean Justice.
Well to be fair, it’s broken already. Let’s say I am turning it upside down, maybe, in a way. And to be blunt, it’s painful to me. I crave feedback, interaction. My gut says I need these things. And I do. But I know full well the internet doesn’t give feedback to anyone in a real way.
Author Alan Jacobs has his own take on this; what he calls the “blogoshpere.” He says:
… Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought. – Alan Jacobs, Goodbye Blog
I find Jacobs’ thoughts here to be revolutionary. Blogs, no matter what they are about, are great to transmit facts. Need a good chicken and dumplings recipe? Go to a food blog. Sure, you’ll have a million food blogs from which to choose, and most are just sharing the same chicken and dumplings recipe wrapped in their own blog’s frame. But the second someone “blogs” about something deep, about their opinion on this or that, and they invite others to respond and “share,” that’s the moment they negate themselves and their own intentions collapse in on themselves. Interesting that I am attempting to respond and reason in a way to Jacobs’ thoughts that would be similar to a blog comment – but the difference is I don’t ask for anything in return.
I don’t want your letters, your emails, comments, likes or tweets.
What I want is for you to think.
This is what I call anti-blogging. Clever, right? My thoughts that I write here are, in a way, my comments on the blog of everything. The blog of me waking every morning hoping against all evidence to the contrary that this life means something, and that the words I am terribly typing (thank God for spellcheck) into this website have meaning beyond the pixels that are being displayed on my screen. I think about the absurdity of existence and how I am even able to make observations about anything or even write them down – whether you consider them meaningful or not.
I just want you to know; be an observer; see what fits and what doesn’t. Then I want you to just move on with it all in mind. Let it bounce around in your brain. Whatever you do with my thoughts is no matter, I just want to tell what it feels like to be who I am. And who am I anyway? Who are you? Let’s ask the questions together and live the questions together.
“…the lonely world within myself…”
I hope in some way to mold this “enemy of thought” into something more like a signpost of “what-do-you-call-it?” A place to try and name the unnameable of the lonely world within myself, and by extension, the lonely world within you. Maybe you’ll find you feel the same about a lot of what I say here. Maybe not. No matter, I’m trying to escape by choosing not to escape. I want this to be a place where anyone can come by and stretch their mind open to catch whatever stupid things I have to say, because there isn’t any sort of pressure to agree or disagree. Because maybe the stupid emptiness in me is, in a lot of ways, just like the stupid emptiness in you. Stupid because of its unmovable nature; stupid because it is most certainly not inescapable emptiness.
Nevertheless, I hope in your mind you always do a dance of agreeing and disagreeing.
Like a cardio workout for your brain, it keeps you healthy. So here, now: just read. Digest and “comment” on all of this by bringing it into the battle fought moment by moment inside the lonely world within yourself.
Who does this guy think he is?
I'm Jon Roberts. Curious, contradicting, broken; unforgivably human. I've got some thoughts I'd like to share. Things I've learned. Things I'm still figuring out. But most of all, I have questions I want you to join me in asking. Join me in living the questions.