Saturday, October 20, 2007

Blogging is making me crazy (er).

I find myself checking for comments, way too often. I find myself checking other blogs and their comments way too often.

I find myself wanting to respond to subjects I don't really care all that much about, while taking so long to respond to subjects I do care about that I never get around to posting.

I find myself friendly with people I don't even know, who might not even like me and might be disappointed in me, and vice versa.

I find that people who meet me or know me are less likely to read my blog than people I haven't met, and people who might live far away.

I find there is always a danger that I'll not say things I want to say, and say things I don't want to say.

I find that honest is most interesting, but because I don't know who's reading, I have to be careful.

I find that most everyone else is anonymous and I'm right there, name and all.

I find that brevity is the soul of wit, but am constantly tempted to pontificate.

I find I start the day with nothing to blog about, and end the day restraining myself to no more than 3 entries.

I find I want to constantly go back and change my posts.

I find, for some reason, I don't used swear words much. Though in real life, even in my store, I can get pretty blue.

I find this "I find" structure clunky.

I find the stuff I know, that I think everyone knows, is sometimes the stuff everyone else is interested in, and stuff I just discovered is old news to everyone else.

I find most blogs pretty uninteresting, yet somehow expect people to read mine.

I find I think most people blog, when lots of people don't even know what a blog is.

I find myself making endless and pointless lists that I could probably carrying on forever.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why is blogging addictive. Why its not new, Why its important.

Blogging has always existed.

In the 70's it was CB radio, and people just talked shit on the 'air'. ( Note Feynman made it clear your not really on the air, as its an electromagnetic phenomenon ).

Then in the 80's with PC's every dildo had a Bulletin-Board, not unlike the BENDBB termites.

In about 1995 HTML took off with HTTP, and now we have blogging. Same shit, 24/7, people like to talk, and we do learn. Like reading the paper why do people do that? To learn I learn a lot on the web.

Ask a question like "Who is ripping off the taxpayer in Bend", and I get 50 responses in one day, often it clarify's my intuition, sometimes I get a whole new perspective.

Duncan, I cannot believe that YOU post in all forums NEVER as anonymous. My guess is that you have lots of aliases. In fact we don't really even know if its true, there may not even be a person in pegagus? Duncan could be an alias.

I do agree, especially in politics its better to be anonymous. Once you start getting into issues that means MONEY, and BEND is a mob town, it can be dangerous to fuck with the mob, and interfere with their racket ( Brooks, Kuratek, ... )

For me, and its the reason I lace profanity, I find the whole 'political correctness' to be UN-NATURAL. I cannot say what I think at home, without cutting cut off pussy for a year. Thus with you guys I can say what I think, what I really think, and not get into trouble.

I think there are a lot of people that need to release steam. To much political correctness, and too much bullshit in Bend.

Anonymous said...

"I find that people who meet me or know me are less likely to read my blog than people I haven't met, and people who might live far away."

I like reading your blog but I'm one of those who've never met you and don't live in your town (although I visit a couple times per year, and have been in Pegasus once).

I check out other blogs (Brad DeLong's and Mark Thoma's are favorites), but they don't have your style of personal narrative or in-the-trenches reporting on the economy that you provide.

Bend Economy Man said...

Duncan, I think that it's gotta be a lot different for us anon bloggers.

I mean in the sense "why do I do this?" Not better or worse, but different.

I started blogging because I wanted to talk about the crazy stuff I saw happening in our local economy, but friends and family didn't want to hear it.

At the backyard BBQs all anyone wanted to talk about was how much their house was worth. Old-timers considered themselves prescient, and newcomers thought they were on the ground floor of an amazing opportunity.

But they weren't. This is a TOWN. It's neither smart nor stupid to live here. There's good aspects and bad ones.

The blogs I like to come across that tickle my funny bone are the "hi everyone, we moved to Bend" blogs. These people try so hard to show how much fun they're having.

Maybe they NEEDED to move to have that much fun; maybe they could've stayed at home. Maybe they're running from something, maybe they're running towards something.

But anyway, it's become like, say, Prague in the '90s - a hodgepodge of "expat" communities interacting with each other and with the locals.