so ive been musing the past couple of days on my addiction to blogs. my husband says my downfall in life is blogs. blog blog bliggity blogs, i love blogs. i read them all night long. i sneak one in in between real life chores and reward myself with a quick peek after a task is completed, or not completed but almost completed, completed enough that i deserve a break. for the most part, it is a huge, enormous waste of time (im so good at that), but im willing to wager my future of being independently wealthy on the fact you, blog reader, love blogs too. even if you wont admit to loving them, you sneak and click and creep around the blogs of those you know and those you dont know, secretly soaking in every word and picture and comment of people's personal lives published right here on the beautiful internet (unless you are my husband, who has absolutely no interest in blogs and didn't start reading mine until i cried and said if he loved me he would want to know what i had to say to the internet world).
so here is my question of the day: why? whats the obsession with blogs? why must i know what my sisters ex best friends husband did yesterday, and last week for valentines day? why why why? why do i secretly want to see pictures of a girl i havent talked to in five years? why am i interested in how your christmas break went? why does a new post make excitement creep up my spine and look like a large mixing bowl of brownie batter waiting to be consumed while my husband is away at basketball and not present to enforce my 2009 goal of not eating crap for every meal?
the answer, my friends, is simple. i love simple, because i think that everything is simple if you can just take it in the right way. my brain and my heart puzzled over it for a while and then i realized i was making the question much too complex, just like we do with everything in life. its simple. its easy. its life. its the way things work. PEOPLE NEED PEOPLE. people love people. we love each other. i love you. something you said or wrote or posted or told your friend who told your neighbor who told me has probably caused me to cry at some time. we, as in the enormous chain of beating hearts known as mankind, love to know about each other. we like to know that in some way we are all a little bit the same, a little bit human, working towards the same things and crying sometimes and laughing sometimes and doing all those other things that make us beautiful and human. our souls cry out "you are like me!" and somehow that makes life a little better and a little easier and helps us keep rowing in our little canoes. and though sometimes blogs encourage crap like jealousy and competition and all that other junk that also makes us human but not so beautiful, they do something much more important. they connect us.
maybe you live in illnois or georgia or japan or croatia, but through publishing on your own little plot of cyberspace, i can know how youre doing, feeling, what you look like, about your new bangs. i can feel like we are friends (even if i dont know you, sorry if that creeps you out but youre reading my blog and you dont know me, so you're the creeper.) and when bad things happen, and you say "hey, i dont feel so hot today" and you are brave enough and bold enough and beautiful enough to say that to all of your e-friends on the worldwideweb, i can think, "we all have rough days," and maybe on my next rough day i will think of your blogspot and your little post and feel like maybe someone out there in that big bad world knows how i feel. someone whos heart is beating just like mine is beating, maybe even at the exact same time, like heart twins. and i can share a little bit in your wedding day when you post wedding pictures, and i can think your kid is cute when you show me the 180th video of him, and i can laugh at your jokes, and i can relate to you in some small and important little way. i like that. and i like you. and i like that we are both humans, humans with hearts.
i hear a lot of negative stuff about blogs. i know sometimes it brings out weird things like whos kids are the cutest or who has the funniest posts or self advertisement or the promotion of the idea that people have perfect lives or whatever, but cheers to all of you out there that are sending your messages out into the universe, hoping someone will find your bottle and feel connected, sending your bluebird out to e-fly not sure whether people will comment or creep or just be mad you are taking up cyberspace. cheers to you that read blogs not to think your life (or your blog) is better than anyone elses, but because you want to connect, you want to find heart twins across the world. you want to be human together. cheers to you that arent afraid to be yourselves, arent afraid to show your true colors, your inner bluebirds, your blog bottles to an entire internet-reading population of blogger-junkies. cheers to you who blog about the hard things and the good things and the things that we all need to read once in a while. cheers to you for sitting on the other end of a computer screen, heart beating.
so i guess this prayer is a hallelujah to all those who blog, and blog because you are human and real and want to send out your message in a blog bottle to whomever reads it. its beautiful. i mean it. it is also a prayer to those who guiltily read blogs, secretly hoping you are not super weird for slinking onto blogs of people you've never met, and really really hoping that they will never find out. its not weird. its just human. we are all just people, people who are connected thanks to the glorious magic of the internet and the blogosphere and the worldwide conversation that now takes place everyday. im glad people need people, and e-people need e-people, and i can log onto my computer at 3:42 am and find someone to connect to. and maybe, just maybe, youre on the other end of a computer screen, eating brownie batter and nodding your head, heart beating at the exact same time as mine, my heart twin. this is an e-card to all of you.
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3 comments:
Confession: I stalk your blog. I don't know you; I don't even know if the friend who showed me your blog knows you, but I do know that when I see on my reader that you've posted - I save it for last because you always have such beautiful posts. So here's to blog stalkers everywhere.
PS - I console myself about my creeper status with the fact that I am actually friends with the authors of vast majority of blogs I read...so I feel slightly less like a creeper. :)
I completely agree. Recently I have had a few conversations with the homeless man that lives on University Ave. I usually am biking past him and will stop and chat. He love to talk. He will talk my ear right off. Talking about Robert Redford owing him money and a bunch of other stuff that makes no sense but I just listen and laugh when he laughs. I realized that even though I am not saying anything and he doesn't need me to, he enjoys our 10 minute chats where he can just talk to a person. Sure he is crazy, but just like the rest of us he needs people contact. people really do need people.
thanks for the post, and all the other ones that have come previous. You're writing is amazing.
I'd give up lean pockets, animal crackers, taco bell, and pretty much anything else other then diet soda for blogs. My addiction is overwhelming. I'm glad you're back to posting.
Oh and this is late, but in response to your last two blogs:
I will NOT live in Nevada or Idaho, bret gets really offended when I say I won't live in Idaho because his extended family lives there. I would gladly live in any other state.
When you and Nick are unfathomably wealthy, if you'd like you can join Bret and I in going to a small town in Nevada during the summer, like Elko or something, and buying a lazy boy for every citizen, lining them up in the desert and then putting on a crazy good firework show. That's what we plan on doing with some of our millions.
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