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Blogging

I thought a little about why I like to blog, and I've concluded three things. First, blogging allows you to create yourself, to define your personality more intentionally than in face-to-face discussion. For that reason, there is a sense of control over the way other people perceive you. You hone your image in a way that you prefer. For that reason, blogging is an art, because you cast into one amalgamated whole your thoughts, desires, sympathies, fears (or lack of fears, if you choose to appear brave or unaffected by life's troubles), and even your talents. It is also a science, because you are able to quantify your popularity by measuring the number of times others have viewed your pages. I suppose, if I were honest with myself, I would say that I like the feeling of letting other people see the good and not the bad.

This leads to the second reason I blog. I also blog because I like to be heard. Except perhaps around those closest to me, I'm fairly quiet in real life. Blogging allows me to express my thoughts in full, without feeling like I'm dominating a conversation or sparking inconsequential discussion. Those who want to hear me can hear me, while those who don't can shut me off anonymously. There is in this need to remain socially proper, I see, a vulnerability to others' judgments, as though I don't trust enough in real-time to allow others to see me (so that they are also unable to judge me). Nonetheless, blogging is an outlet that gives me the ability to think out loud, to think visibly.

Finally, blogging allows me to expand a thought into something much more explicit, to transform an intuition or a simplified thought into something more coherent. By doing this, I feel like I'm becoming more aware of what I believe, like I'm somehow filling dark holes of ignorance with a knowledge of myself that makes me both more recognizable and more prepared to confront ideas that may match or challenge what I believe. Blogging, then, allows me to look in the mirror, and although it's a mirror that can present at the first a smudged and grimy reflection (to borrow from a Biblical analogy), over time you are able to see more of yourself. This is true, of course, until we change. Thanks for reading.

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