The only way I use social media is by blogging. I do check out a couple of people who scavenge the internet for pertinent news articles. Since it’s difficult to do the work myself, it’s nice to have someone else find the kernels of truth (or maybe the grains of wisdom) in that teeming chaos. But for what I myself post online? It’s this blog.
For the past nineteen years, this blog has been there for me when I needed an outlet, whether it was to talk about the writing process, promote authors, discuss books I’ve read, help me find a way forward during my years of grief (and coincidentally helping others as I helped myself), tell about my experiences as a first time home owner, showcase my garden, or express gratitude for my life even while my body is slowly declining into old age.
I’ve seldom considered why people read this blog (or why they don’t when they don’t). Sometimes I know, though, especially when people come to read my grief articles to find out that they’re not alone or to find out why they are going through what they are going through. Others use this blog as a way to keep track of me, not in a creepy stalker sort of way, but as a concerned friend. All too often, we let life separate us from our friends, and so this blog shows them that I’m still around and doing okay. But for the rest? Their reasons for reading belong to them, and really have no part in why I write.
Today I found a comment on an article I wrote back in February about my current run of daily blogging, where the commenter asked if blogging every day makes us confuse quality with quantity, and if it’s narcissistic to think that people want to read every day what one writes.
For the most part, I don’t write for others. I write for myself, and anyone who wants to can come along for the ride, so I responded: I suppose one has to ask if the blogger cares what people think of their blog. Sometimes it’s for the bloggers — keeping to a discipline, clarifying their ideas, telling their truth to a (perhaps) uncaring world.
And their rebuttal: Well, when you publish something it’s for a public. If you need an exercise for your discipline keep it to yourself and don’t publish it.
I don’t understand the point of this exchange. People always write for themselves. Even if the writing is published, it’s still for themselves. If bloggers didn’t get anything from writing, published or not, they wouldn’t do it. And just because bloggers publish their articles, no one has to read them. In my case, it’s not as if I’m chaining readers to my computer.
Do I want to be heard? Of course I do. Although I say I write for myself, I consider blogging to be a form of communication, a longer way than simply posting a comment on some other social site or sharing someone else’s commentary. And communication, even in such a sideways fashion as this, is important to one who spends most of her waking hours alone. Do I consider this blog to be narcissistic? Since it’s centered on me and my life (who else do I know well enough to write about?), I suppose it could be considered narcissistic, but then everyone who writes would by definition be narcissistic. And even if it is narcissistic, who cares? If what I write doesn’t resonate with anyone, they simply stay away. At least I’m not heaping more outrage on an already outraged world, not spewing hatred or trying to make anyone believe what I want them to believe. More than anything, it seems as if I show appreciation for whatever the day brings.
As for quality vs quantity, again, what difference does it make? I sometimes have interesting ideas. Sometimes I’m just letting a piece of my day slip out into the open. And always, I write to the best of my ability, proofreading until the piece is as well written as possible. (This is also part of the discipline factor, something I would not do if I were simply jotting entries into a for-me-only journal).
I might be getting away from the blog prompt of how I use social media and getting into the why of it, but it still comes down to the same thing: the only way I use social media is by blogging.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.
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