This blogging thing...

On September 15th of 2005, I wrote the following post:

Posting something personal for the first time.
I made a new friend a couple weeks ago. He has introduced me to this blogging idea, and I have to admit I find it to be quite a challenging experience. An online journal is just that: a public record of one's personal life. I have had a journal before. I'm just a little concerned about making it public. I am unsure as to how open I can be, since I will be writing with the constant awareness that I might actually have an audience... pretty scary. Yet at the same time I realize that this might help me organize my thoughts and stay true to myself. After all, life itself is public, and perhaps a little insight will explain a lot. I've always believed in transparency, but aren't we all subject to interpretation? Two warnings: First, I write both in English and Spanish. It makes it easier for me, and after all, I think I am writing this for purely selfish reasons : ) ... for me, for my friends, for my family... if you were meant to know it, you'll probably hear it from me before realizing you need a Spanish-English dictionary. And second: please, take it all with a grain of salt. This is, after all, a first-person point of view, and is charged with all the pros and cons of an insider's perspective.So there, that's my introduction. I'm going to try to concentrate on my essay now. I'm still wondering what my main argument for this paper really is... and believe me, that's not a good thing.

I've been thinking about this blogging thing for a while now. When I first started blogging, I had a completely different approach to it than I do now.. I didn't actually have an audience, to start with, and I didn't truly expect to have one (at least not other than my amazing friend Janie, who had been blogging for a while, and my new "friend," to whom I felt I could be completely honest from the very start). The idea of my blog was not to keep my friends updated. I can do that when I see them or talk to them on the phone. This was supposed to be a journal -one with the helpful, sobering restriction of a possible audience- but still a personal journal. I've found myself doing spellchecks lately.. and deleting strange-sounding phrases from my posts, fearing I've said something that might affect someone else. I've also found I don't enjoy blogging quite as much... or learn from it... or truly express things as I did before. I think I've become too aware of the public side of blogging and have forgotten that this is, after all, a journal. So I suppose this post is an experiment (if it doesnt work I'll just go back to normal journals.. God only knows what sort of trouble this thing might get me into)... some sort of a warning, maybe... that I'll try to go back to blogging for myself.. for ..purely ..selfish ..reasons ...again ..even if I'll share it with you. So I thought it might be a good idea to apologize beforehand for all the silly, unexplained, and inexplicable things I might say (or might have said already)... and for the Spanish.. and for all that stuff. If you have somehow been invited to this site, please take everything with a grain of salt ;) This is, after all, a first-person point of view, and is charged with all the pros and cons of an insider's perspective...