If I could only collect my thoughts... Write them out, concisely with a beginning, middle and end, one idea at a time, and then collect them all. Shape my mind into a digital encyclopedia. Well-organized. Cross-referenced. Then I could link to all the relevant passages in online discussions where I needed to explain my thinking.
Strike that. It would be more honest to say: Then I wouldn't feel so alone.
When I started my current Norwegian blog, seven years ago, I wanted to create that digital encyclopedia. It was to a monologue of developing opinions and ideas, and part of a greater dialogue between my mind and the world. A philosophically minded project. Never mind that I didn't know anything about philosophical method (I still don't). Never mind that I didn't know how to read up on a topic. (I still don't. I'm so confused by facts. There are so many. I don't know where to start, or when to wrap it up.)
My Norwegian blog didn't become what I wanted it to be. I didn't update very frequently, and I was rarely satisfied when I did. Then I began to discover that qualities like concise, logical, well-organized, were the exact opposite of how my writing worked. When I turned my writing style into something more talkative, more personal, more meandering, interesting things began to happen. At the same time (and maybe not by coincidence) I began to understand a lot more about my previously very confusing life. I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, and used that information to put many of the other pieces together. So the blog I had named "Things I am interested in" become about the most interesting thing of all: Me.
It didn't change the update frequency, but it did change the quality. (At least in my own eyes. For all I know, other people may have liked it all along.)
Another thing about my Norwegian blog is that I never wrote any kind of introduction to it. I think it was because I didn't want to make any promises. I didn't want to have a blog out there with a mission statement, a few posts, and nothing else... Actually I still don't. But at least, my more talkative writing style means my posts will stand better on their own, so even if this is the only update I ever make it wouldn't look so lonely out there.
No mission statement, though. Not for the long term. Maybe for the short term, I want to
- continue the exploration of my life that I began in my Norwegian blog
- refer people here from my other online activities, although not in an encyclopaedic way
- spend some time writing shorter pieces, in between some larger, more demanding projects
- get some practice writing in English, fitting my writing style onto another language (and on that matter, those of you who like to correct other people's language are more than welcome, only be aware that I sometimes make grammatical errors on purpose)
- maybe try to engage a bit with my readers, something I have been afraid of before
- now that I think of it, maybe I should try to attract and keep some readers
- to have a peephole into my thoughts somewhere out there on the web, so I don't feel so alone
For the long term, given that it survives this period of writing shorter pieces, the blog will have to develop on its own, because that is what personalized writing does.
I'll be wrapping this up now, making this post uncharacteristically short compared to my Norwegian ones, but at least filled with a characteristic level upon level of self-reference towards the end. And in an attempt to engage my readers: Uhm, any questions?
