Two years of blogging!

Yes, today is Froogville's 2nd Anniversay.

Happy Birthday, Froogville!

I note that in two of my first posts (here and here, if you should happen to want to view them in their original context, complete with comments) I pondered the question of why I was bothering to start blogging at all - I felt disdainful of the activity in general, and wary of where it might take me. Two years on...... these questions are still tormenting me!

Good stuff; so, I reprint them below.

In dispraise of blogging

I don't like the idea of blogging. Not at all.

Yes, partly it is my Neo-Luddite distaste for technology. The Internet is too profuse: it challenges, overwhelms my inner calm. But I've never liked the idea of keeping a paper diary either. There seems to be something so desperately needy, attention-seeking, praise-demanding about it. (Nobody ever keeps a really private diary, do they? I'm sure all diarists have half an eye on publication of some sort, yearn to have their thoughts read by others - whether the public at large, or generations yet unborn, or the intimates from whom they supposedly strive to keep the book hidden.) A strange mix of insecurity and megalomania - it's all so "Look at me! My life is so interesting and unusual and special!"

And I've always been sceptical as to whether anyone who spends that much time writing about their life can actually be living one. Maybe Pepys et al could toss off a few thousand words in a mere fifteen minutes or so, and then call it a night, slipping immediately into deep repose. Me, I'm a slow writer. Careful. Thoughtful. And if I try doing too much writing late at night, the turbid brain runs out of control, condemning me to hours of insomnia.

If there's a problem with diaries and the kind of people who keep them, then that problem is 100 times worse with blogging, where the writer dispenses with any pretence of recording his thoughts only for his own benefit, and actively seeks to parade them before the whole world. The blogosphere (and what a portentous, comically ugly word that is!) is, I fear, an orgy of narcissism.

So why am I doing it?

Hmmm. An interesting question. Let me ponder.

The Odysseus challenge

After some minutes of pondering my last self-directed question, this is what I came up with.

Why am I blogging, when the very concept inspires the deepest contempt in me? Well, I think a large part of it is my wariness of narcissism, and a desire to examine whether I really am as proof against it as I'd like to think. By exposing myself to this supremely narcissistic environment, I am testing my strength of character. If I can be a blogger and not succumb to the myriad temptations to preen before that huge (?) unseen audience out there, not descend into the rampant self-regard, self-importance, self-love that I see in so many sorry blogaholics out there, then I will have achieved something, some comfort, some peace of mind, a reaffirmation of myself.

I fancied it was somewhat like Odysseus' celebrated ordeal of exposing himself to the ultimate temptation of the Sirens' song. Except, of course, that he was cheating. He'd had himself tied to the mast, so he didn't have to resist temptation. No such luxury for me. I'm out here on my own, with nothing to hold me back from disaster.