Back to blecch

As you might anticipate, I am a blogging neophyte.  My earliest exposure to blogs was the distasteful surprise of finding an anecdote about my daughter on someone’s blog—blecch.  I am sure many of my reservation about internet-disclosures originated in that moment of total…blecchness.  All I could think about, then and now, is people I have never met having access to personal details about my child.  

The blogs I have looked at since didn’t do a whole lot to dispel this uneasiness.  As a would-be writer, I think of journaling, e.g., as a way to record thoughts which might inform future stories or pieces, but I would never share these jottings as they are usually so much dross with a few gems mixed in—if I am lucky.  Who wants to see my dross?  And do I want to see others’?

In the list of the 15 most popular blogs, #6 (gizmodo) celebrates the invention of the vibrator—a special feature for Mother’s Day, perhaps?  Let’s not even talk about the fact that the #1 blog is Arianna Huffington’s.  There is a huge and hugely seamy underside of the internet of which I have been apparently blissfully unaware.

This aside, I can see how I might apply this in my classroom and avoid the blecch-factor.  I am currently teaching an advanced writing seminar and so have spent a lot of time this semester thinking about the writing issues faced by my students (and me).  Keeping a running (b)log of my ruminations to which my students would have access would obviate the need for beating those dead horses in class—they could be introduced via the blog and the kids could review them when needed.  That would retain class-time, already at a premium, for workshopping and laughter.

As I close, I should mention that I googled the anecdote that I mentioned earlier; it’s still there.  It’s an alarming reality that this shred of my personal life remains available, adrift in that seamy underside, even after eight years—and there’s nothing I can do about it.