Week 1: Personal Reflections and Spirited Musings

I have written a blog before. I write based from life experience. Mostly reflections on issues or experiences I have faced in my own life. I feel like sometimes people may benefit from reading about these experiences and maybe they can reflect on their own circumstances through reading what I have learned.

 Which is funny because I am not always the most interested in reading people's blogs. I prefer reading out of a book to reading from a screen. So most of the memoirs or journals I have read are works that have been published in print. But I do believe that blogs have their own contribution to offer to the world of literature. Especially for those who may not have the means or opportunity to publish a printed work in their life time. There are people who never get to do this who have something that we could all benefit from hearing/reading. I think blogs are unique in the way they offer this opportunity to writers through a free platform.

I think part of the appeal of print for me is a reflection of the way I prefer to read and write. I tend to write in a more formal style, as if I were writing a book or an article. This is the style of writing that appeals to me most. That being said, I don't necessarily believe that writing has to take one form. It usually varies from person to person even if the author is attempting to adhere to a certain style. Whether its formal or more stream of consciousness, our voices have a way of pushing through and coloring the way our message comes across. From what few blogs I have read, most of their writers tend to write in the same semi formal style as myself. But this may be a reflection of the bias I have when choosing what to read. I certainly don't believe this style appeals to everyone, some people engage and connect more readily with a stream of conscious-like approach to writing. There are also blogs written in stream of consciousness that would lose their message if written in a more formal style with strict adherence to correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. It. Just. Wouldn't. Be. The. Same.

I do agree with the author of the article, "Screening Moments, Scrolling Lives," when she says that online journals provide connection and community in a way that print journals do not. I have definitely utilized my own blog in order to foster these unique relationships and communicate my message to a broader audience. I think this is a universal desire; to have one's voice heard and understood and your perspective appreciated. The online platform has made this more attainable for the people who utilize it. Myself included.

Interestingly enough, I do not share everything online. I am more of a private person by nature and also by necessity. There are things I wouldn't share on my blog, and haven't, and for those I keep a written journal. I feel that although there is a level of anonymity when posting online, there is also a risk to sharing too much. We cannot control who reads our words anymore than we can control how our audience responds to them, and there are certain things I choose not to share because I don't have a desire to open up those areas of myself to judgement. Even a journal is limited in how well you can truly portray your deepest thoughts and feelings, and as we have learned as a society, things in type can easily be misunderstood and misconstrued.

Blogs aren't simple. They defy constraints and they don't have nice edges that fit into certain molds. Like people. We all have a different story to tell, and a different way to tell it. The blog allows certain freedom in that sense. I appreciate this online approach to self reflection for that reason among others. Simply put, it is extremely interesting to read about other people; their lives, their thoughts, their experiences and relationships. Blogs offer us a way to do that without seeming voyeuristic. We are invited to look into the window of their lives as shamelessly as we please, for as long as we'd like. People now offer up their private lives for public consumption, and despite the risk of divulging too much, this new platform certainly has its own contribution to add to the world of literature.


Sorapure, Madeline. Screening Moments, Scrolling Lives: Diary Writing on the Web, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23540385, January 10, 2019.