What's notable about having a blog (as opposed to keeping, say, a more traditional lock-and-key, under-bed Diary) is that even if the readership for your blog is limited to you and your nosy mom (trolling for information that will allow her to accurately psychoanalyze her 'tween), you still feel a heightened pressure to be choosy when deciding what to write about. Particularly now that the blog-o-sphere has transformed from being the realm of moody teenagers' emotional word-vomit to a relatively respected forum for information, even people who blog about their personal lives will pause a little longer in front of their text boxes, compelled to plan out in advance entries that will maximize the interest of their rabidly attentive, possibly imaginary, adoring fanbase.
Presumably, these same people wouldn't put so much thought and care into a personal diary. Even entries with gems of intellectual brilliance would probably still be more likely to ramblingly start out with, "Dum de dum. What to write about today?" or, "Dear Diary: Farted in the elevator today, but I think I managed to make it look like it was Bob. Win!"
Since I'm not typically an exception to Humanity, I ran into this sort of selection conundrum while deciding what to write about just moments ago. Except even more so, because, frankly, my life is currently in Change Mode, and a month is a long time for me to be away from the bloggin' keys. In the interest of chronicling noteworthy life events, I could feasibly pick from a Jeopardy range of topics including, but not limited to, my job, the condo, The City, the Blackhawks, the World Cup, apartment-hunting, apartment-finding, and the residual angst of having a still-uncertain year-from-now future. I mentally scanned through pretty much every relevant personal element of my life before even remembering that Current Events existed, much less the Gulf oil spill.
I generally stay away from big-news, hot-button topics for the same reasons I stay away from feminism and boyz, which is to say, there doesn't seem to be a way to write about them without sounding idiotic and cliche. Plus, Current Events have the added aversion-bonus of usually having a complex history and background behind them, of which I am hilariously ignorant. I wouldn't dream of trying to comment on the oil spill, because in reality I have no idea whether or not BP is truly a moustache-twisting Rocky-and-Bullwinkle caliber villain; or whether my instinct to still love Obama through his reactions and actions is wise; or if I can believe any of the news reports predicting that all will eventually be well any more than I can believe the ones reporting the Slick Apocalypse. I just don't know. So what could I really have to say?
Which is a shame, really, because I have a feeling that in avoiding all the topics that ground me to my zeitgeist, I'm doing myself a double-disservice. First, I'm further accentuating within myself what is already becoming a MO of 21st century folk: the narrow-minded belief that The World and its events are remote and distant and unimportant to Me, who, truly, should focus her attention on more relevant and significant things. Second, it's totally going to be less cool for me to re-read this in twenty years and not be able to know how I felt about all these important political and social goings-on. That would really be a tragedy.
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