Why would I have a blog?

Why would I start a blog? Having a blog requires degrees of narcissism, exhibitionism and voyeurism. As it happens, I’m a bit of a narcissist, exhibitionist and voyeur.

Narcissism: noun
excessive or erotic interest in oneself and one's physical appearance.
• Psychology: extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.

Setting aside the focus on physical appearance, starting a blog requires a sense that what one has to say is worth, for other people, investing a small amount of time. It’s a public forum, not a private one: the author must operate under the assumption that someone, somewhere, will give a damn.

Exhibitionism: noun
extravagant behavior that is intended to attract attention to oneself.
• Psychiatry: a mental condition characterized by the compulsion to display one's genitals in public.

Let’s substitute the word “intimacy” for “genitals” and ask: isn’t it enough to just discuss one’s ideas with people when you see them? Why the need to self-publish?

The answer for me lies in the lack of immediate social context. By immediate social context, I mean how our conversations are normally defined around a relevant set of topics: the conditions of one’s day, current events in the world, new news regarding friends and acquaintances (ie gossip), plans and projects we are involved with, observations of our immediate surroundings, et cetera. Rarely do our conversations push the boundries of these regular and highly relevant topics. We often have to go out of our way to create these conversations—by organizing book clubs and other such events.

Blogs aren’t burdened by any immediate social context (though are obviously influenced by the way we self-censor ourselves every day). They are what we think about when we are alone. What we think about when we are thinking of things of purely personal interest—the things we take pleasure in thinking about. They allow for the pleasure of sharing our intimate personal discourses.

Voyeurism: noun.
Deriving sexual satisfaction by secretly watching others undress or engage in sexual activity.

For the third time I’ll stretch the definition, this time with the subject. One obvious pleasure from blogging is being part of a blogging community where you are continuously observing each other’s intimate thoughts. But this isn’t really voyeurism, which requires spying of some sort. So if bloggers are they voyeurs, who are they secretly observing?

The answer is themselves. Writing for pleasure, for me, requires the deceptively difficult practice of pushing ideas past their normal surface of utility. When I discover something new about the world, the common reaction is to note it, make some flippant comment about it, and register it with every other observation in the bank of nearly inaccessible thoughts within our subconscious. Writing allows me both the time and the medium to think: sitting here, in front of my computer, like taking a long motorbike ride, provides one of the day’s few opportunities to think about something other than the task at hand. And committing these thoughts to script forces me to think of the right words and constructions of words needed to say exactly what I mean to say. In doing so, in pushing ideas further, I’m unraveling the personal intimacy of thoughts, emotions and reactions I may not realize are there or have normal and immediate access to.

What is ultimately revealed has the potential to be banal, fascinating, mundane, comic, magical and more. The narcissist rarely sees beyond themselves; the exhibitionist takes chances with other people’s reactions; the voyeur makes decisions only for themselves. So, here I am.