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Five reasons why I blog
I’ve been tagged by Daily Referendum, and mindful of my obligations to the mighty power of the cybernetic meme, here goes…
1. Writing—poetry, fiction, opinion—is a compulsion for me.
I love it. It’s not as good as sex but I would say, until my boyfriend arrived in my life nearly nine years ago—after which what follows most certainly does not apply—that writing is rarely disappointing and doesn’t require the exchange of phone numbers.
Many times my writing has earned me money, kept a roof over my head, paid for my bad habits, saved me from making mistakes, helped me to see things clearly, made up my mind on some issue or another, and—most importantly—touched other people in meaningful ways.
It has also allowed me as an adult to indulge in the kinds of playtime fantasy most people leave behind when they reach their teens. I may yet earn a living from indulging the kid that refuses to stay in the past.
My writing on my blog I give away for free, for the edification of all humanity… *ahem*
2. To show the world that gay is not a blanket descriptor for any human being, and just one aspect of who I am.
Being gay means only that I have emotionally intimate and sexual relationships with the same sex. It does not mean I have any more or less tendency to get things right or wrong, to be monogamous or otherwise, than any other human being.
I have as many choices, perhaps more, than a lot of heterosexuals, for whom questioning is not always second nature and so they can blunder through life and find themselves married with five kids and wonder how they got there. I make choices. I am always conscious of the ability to go this way, or that.
I might be obnoxious or caring, pretty damn handsome or ugly as a mule, someone you want to know or someone you want to run away from. The point is, being gay and blogging means I have an opportunity to show that all gay people are as rounded and have as many varied interests and points of view as anyone else. We also go shopping, pay bills, use the toilet, face highs and lows in life. We can be boring, or exciting.
Very few of us are one-trick-ponies and we don’t deserve to be marginalised, beaten or otherwise treated with disrespect.
Above all else, a subliminal message of this blog is, if you have a problem with just that one aspect of my life, get over it. It’s preventing your own growth, spiritually and emotionally. Get beyond the sex and see the human in the being.
And this blog is inclusive, not exclusive.
3. I want my voice to be heard (or at least read).
I don’t believe in our democracy anymore. It’s been warped and perverted beyond all recognition of anything moral by corporate concerns, back-handers, lies, deceit, ego and power. Our highest-profile politicians are all self-serving, every one of them, irrespective of the parties they slave their minds to, abandoning free will. I don’t believe in any party; I believe in people, if only they would get off their backsides and stop being sheep. We are encouraged to be sheep, to be passive. I am not.
My blog is a way of promoting not myself but the rights and innate power of the individual, communities and society. I highlight injustices I see, read or hear about. I may not feel able to vote for anyone who stands a chance of gaining power and doing good, but I can at least be an advocate of social responsibility and encourage others to think before they turn on those lights and buy those big cars.
In maintaining this blog, I once upon a time never thought I could get into trouble for being honest and open about my beliefs and values. I didn’t count on malign individuals with power to influence my life, for better or worse, trawling my words—and there are many here—for specific statements and sentences to nail me with. I regret nothing but one awful experience is why I now carry a disclaimer at the bottom of all posts: enjoy them, sure, but don’t assume anything here to be a presentation of the totality of my views and experiences.
Every blog entry is but a moment in time, captured in amber for others to read and be inspired or provoked by.
4. I’m fascinated by (and fearful of) technology.
I’m not plugged into the Matrix. When I tried to be, as a teenager keen to fit in, I found it a small, cramped space in which to place my head and quickly abandoned all hope of normality. Indeed, I realised that normality is an illusion and not at all desirable.
Since the advent of mass computing and the Internet, I have seen how technology is both enabling and destructive in equal measure. We bloggers for the most part use it to inform, state our views, provoke and entertain. Multi-national companies and oppressive governments, both democratic and autocratic, commie and capitalist, seek to use technology to warp nature and our stomachs with GM food, control what we can and can’t download, monitor our activities and control what we say, think and do.
Technology mirrors the spectrum of the human soul, particularly the Web. I love it and I fear it. Blogging allows me to tame one small corner of cyberspace and call it my own. I guess, in that respect, I’m not dissimilar to those mid-west pioneers staking out slices of territory.
5. I’m strange in a good way (unless you find eccentricity threatening, in which case you’re probably boring).
This blog allows me to create a world of my design, which is why the template has been transformed into something I think is relatively unique over time. I don’t follow the standard ’shopping list’ of ten entries or more showing in full on the front page, I don’t fill up a sidebar with stuff of zero interest to others. I do think showing revised as well as new posts is a good idea, as is showing current music being listened to as it prompts memories for others as well as encouraging folks to try new music for them. I aim to please as well as make people sit up and take notice. I want my blog to be functional, easy to read and access without ever dumbing down on the intelligence quotient.
I want to attract readers who are themselves not that dissimilar to myself in their worldviews and values. I’m happy to say I think I achieve that, and have made many wonderful friends thanks to my efforts here.
The five bloggers I am tagging are: The Web Pen Blog, Musings of a Purple Dragon, Sue and Matthew Didier’s Paranormal Blog, Life at the Edge and My Place :0).
