Blogging miscellanea
*I need to update my blog links! Several people have browsed by and left wonderfully encouraging comments; I'd like to add them to the blogroll, and I need to take a little time to rearrange my blog a bit.
*That got me thinking about something Sojourner had mentioned a while ago: the concept of Gastblogschaft, which includes some responsibilities of bloggers. I haven't been living up to that standard, and although it'd be easy to blame my busy life, I would bet that many bloggers out there are even busier.
*Which also got me thinking about the difference in my tone between speaking as Arachne and speaking on my personal blog. Here, I adopt a much more philosophical (and pompous) tone; there, I do the usual complaining about work, sharing silly links, bouncing about good news, and so on. I'm not certain why I felt I had to split the two, and to give Arachne a different environment, but the result has been good for me overall. Like the freedom of adopting a costume or a role, I can present a part of me more fully this way. The unfortunate side effect is that, as Arachne, I don't have the same kind of full, friendly engagement with the blog as I do in my personal journal.
In order to let part of myself speak, I have to deliberately set out a space for it. And...to bring this line of thinking back around to the topic of this blog...that makes me think of delineating ritual space. Without Arachne, an aspect of myself that tends to be lost under the day-to-day amusements, irritants, and encounters would be too quiet to speak, and would never get stronger. Without ritual, I tend to think "Sure, I'm aware of the divine! Now, what was I going to get for lunch? And where did I put that assignment? And...and...and..." Setting out ritual space is like clearing the weeds away from a fragile plant and giving it the sunshine it needs.
Of course, there are side effects. If I split Arachne and everyday too sharply, it becomes nothing more than a role, not an opportunity. Likewise, there's the danger that ritual and everyday space may come to have nothing in common with each other, nothing that carries over from one realm to the next. And there's the danger of treating others differently when we're in different roles, so much so that we lose our self-consistency.
Hence, Gastblogschaft. And, once finals are over, updating the blogroll.
posted by Arachne @ 8:30 AM
2 Comments:
:) Thanks for mentioning Gastblogschaft! The word was originally conceptualized by Bernulf from Expanding Inward when he did a guest blogging stint on my blog.
I think it is an important concept for all bloggers to take up, espcially for blogs like ours where we are trying to create a sense of community.
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I think we all have the habit of spliting up our personality when we interact with different people. The papers that I write for my professors are much more formal than the posts that I write for my blog. The way that I talk within a job interview is not the way that I would talk to a friend.
I like when you mentioned "If I split Arachne and everyday too sharply, it becomes nothing more than a role, not an opportunity." That is a great reminder that we need to incorporate all aspects of ourselves into every part of our lives.
Thanks, Sojourner! I think that some of my lack of Gastblogschaft (...I can't get enough of that word...) comes from this split of Arachne and my "casual" blog.
Perhaps it's when we're most internally integrated that we're best able to be part of our multiple roles. I think there's something here about the "narrative unity of a human life" that I was recently reading about, but I haven't yet formed it into a coherent thought.
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