After the interim

This is an edited version of a post I began writing in February 2008 and never finished. I don't have any memory of writing it, and I don't know why it wasn't finished. When I rediscovered it, I was surprised by what an appropriate prologue this is to last week's post. Although it may not be apparent to anyone but myself, this entry is a great signpost of the transitional phase I was in a year ago.

If you scroll through my "recent" posts, you will see that I wrote the last one when my son was one month old. Next week, he turns 6 months. During that gap, I've spent a lot of time not writing. I would apologize, but by the time I made that last post, my readership had dwindled to me plus the websurfers who accidentally beached here. That makes an apology seem pretty unnecessary.

Lately, I've been ambivalent about continuing this site. I started it in 2005 when a writing teacher told me that every professional writer needs a Web presence. That advice made sense, and since I was writing professionally at the time, I set up this blog. But I haven't been able to bring myself to do the things bloggers need to do to bring traffic. In fact, the experience has highlighted some bothersome personal weaknesses.

Blogging offers the possibility of exposure on a massive scale. At the same time, it creates intensely private challenges. The success (or lack thereof) of any published writing shines a glaring light on the quality and character of the work. And to the extent that the writer identifies with the writing, the light will shine on him or her, too. The writer's strength, talent, fear and weakness flash like a beacon in that light, and successful writers are willing to gaze at themselves as they are reflected in those flashes. Even more importantly, they are willing to let an audience gaze as well.

This is especially true in blogging, which is driven as much by personality as it is by content. Blogging involves a degree of personal exposure that many other writing styles don't require. Blogging is the equivalent of giving a speech in your underwear, while novels and essays and poetry at least offer the option of a robe. (At the other extreme lie the snow pants and parka of copywriting and technical writing, which are the genres I have done professionally). Successful bloggers, whether they're writing about politics, religion, or their everyday lives, know that their audiences come expecting a degree of personal revelation. Their underwear may not be particularly sexy, but if they don't show some skin, their readers are going somewhere else.

And that lies at the heart of my failure as a blogger. I don't want to stand in front of the Internet in my underwear. As I was writing my very first post, I discovered that I didn't want an audience--not for my personality anyway. I knew what was going to be reflected if I published anything meaningful, and I didn't want to showcase those things.

The short list of things I was willing to publish was unoriginal, derivative, or of so little interest that it bored even me. For a couple of years I blogged without a whole lot of passion or success until it occurred to me that I had so completely avoided being exposed here that a parody of myself had taken shape. I had taken my teacher's advice and had created an online identity. But instead of creating something worth displaying, I had allowed the most insipid and least meaningful aspects of my life to stand in my place.