breaking the ice again
Its been some time since the last post I uploaded here, so in order to break the ice I’m gonna do the dreaded thing; I’m gonna make a blogpost about blogging.
Life got pretty hectic with the coming of summer and my time and ability to focus diminished quite a bit. I then realized I had a couple half-baked thoughts that I considered turning into posts but wasn’t sure whether they were something I really wanted to share or just forcing myself to find something to post about.
And really, underpinning this, I felt a tension with regards to what I should write about or how I should approach my blog. When I first thought about creating a blog, I wanted a place to host my writing so I could plug it and share with people elsewhere. I think I wanted a place to share my take on things and make it public, so I imagined it more like opinion pieces. But as soon as I started blogging, I felt I just wanted to journal more and make it more personal. Ideally, I could treat this place as a sort of scrapbook where I collect different kinds of things, from the braindump, to the hobby idea (ttrpg maps, small lore bits), to the opinion piece, the journal, etc. The hard thing is, it’s difficult to shake off, that feeling that if I write something I’m proud of and want to share to a broader audience, I also risk exposing my more vulnerable and exploratory thoughts posted to the same place, which makes me reluctant to share at all. I want to be able to shout things into the void without worrying about who sees it, but I also want to share well thought out ideas and find readership for them.
These do not feel reconcilable to me. And I have a clear inclination at the moment. If I wanted to do professional writing, I could have chosen a platform like Substack or Medium (although I’ve heard Substack has a fascist problem). I could definitely use bearblog as a polished place if I so chose to and link it to other social media. But as it stands, it feels a lot more suited to being a more personal, private place. And perhaps that is the way to go. Perhaps that’s what really helps me let loose and write without thinking too much about it.
Then, though, comes the other doubt: what is worth posting anyways? There are two reasons why I shy away from posting. The first is feeling that something is too personal even for a private blog and should stay in my notes. How do you make that choice though? If the notes are a space to write my own thoughts and process them, why do I need a blog anyways? The second is the feeling that what I’m sharing is too uninteresting, mundane, lackluster. Why do I feel the need to post it? Who would want to read it anyway? Recently I finished playing Red Dead Redemption 2 after years of leaving it incomplete, and the ending really struck a chord with me. I started writing about what was impactful to me about it, as well as the ludonarrative tensions that I experienced throughout the game. But I felt that I wasn’t writing a particularly interesting or compelling text. Even though I had a drive to process and express my feelings about the game, I wasn’t sure they were worth sharing so, again, I just kept them in my notes.
And that’s it. I don’t know how I’m going to continue. I don’t know how I’m going to resolve this tension between writing for myself and wanting to write for others. But I hope that this post helps me break the ice again and get the ball rolling. If all goes well, I’ll be able to treat this place as somewhere I can share less polished, but still motivated thoughts, and be able to write more.