I Found Your Blog....

I think that the first sign of real success as a blogger is having to deal, in the real world, with people that you really don't want reading your blog coming to you and saying that they have read your blog. This has been happening to me more and more lately, in part because I am just doing more things that make people want to google me before I show up and in part because I am moving around a lot laterally and making new friends. For many years, this blog has been by an artist and as near as I can tell, for about 100 other artists. Now it's kind of all over the place, as am I. And so it sits here on the internet, a record of new ground covered haphazardly. A long-ass digital skidmark that stretches from here all the way back to 2006.

There are lots of reasons to be cool with this. I think the posts I've done about moving away from art have helped some people feel less guilt or anxiety. And the posts that I've done about aikido are probably boring as hell to non-MA geeks, but have helped out my daily life as I figure out how to live a little differently. This is what a blog is for: it's a platform for peer-to-peer generosity, and for putting who you want to be outside yourself, so that you have no excuses. But as both the writing and the audience broaden and I move away from the court-jestery role of artist, in which I am fundamentally powerless and the only authority I have is to say whatever the fuck I want, the Grand Theory of Blogging stops being theoretical.

The Grand Theory of Blogging states that there is nothing to hide, that all the fun stuff--opportunity, interest, connection, cool projects--grow out of the generous sharing of oneself, and that it is fundamentally diminishing to attempt to protect your privacy in a world where everyone has access to everything anyway. In other words, I am already googleable. Since that's true, the most powerful thing I can do is ensure that the first thing you find when you google my name is me. If I am putting my real me out there, then I am narrowing the gap so that I can be helpful to you and connect. While I am at it, I can also set some expectations--for example, don't expect me not to swear and don't expect me not to tell you the truth, even if the truth is a difficult one. I leave you with a clear sense of who I am that is more than a resume--that is more about what drives me than what I have done.

The only person I don't want reading my blog is the person who reads it and tells me that they "found" it like it's a dirty secret. This person is concerned that it is overly tender, and worries to me about how much I am putting out there. When I am in that conversation, the Grand Theory stops being something that I believe or say, and has to become something that I actually enact or apply. My first stabs at application have focused too much on how this person is missing the point. I've been explaining that this accusation of tenderness is absurd, that the content of this blog is actually considered, that there are a lot of things I only write about privately, that I am a huge fan of boundaries, that I'm not Jennifer Ringley. That's just arguing. It turns all that presence I've been working to build into distance.

The cool thing about the Grand Theory is that it is the device that makes this kind of arguing unnecessary. In this conversation in which I am being accused of tenderness, I am standing fully before a person who, because they have read my blog, knows how I can and cannot help, who I think my best self is, how I struggle as we all do and how I specifically aspire to overcome those struggles. The conversation started because that best foot is forward: I am a truth teller. I admit my mistakes. I have a specific trajectory and a way of organizing my world and making it meaningful. I have limiting habits of mind that I work to catapult over. Because I am a known quantity, I actually have the luxury of shutting my mouth in that moment and listening to what that person is telling me about who they are and, in this specific instance, what they fear.

Comments

[taobaoseeker]

This quite interesting and touch me a lot

[MBT Shoes]

It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.

[keno]

It is really very helpful

[Beijing Kungfu show]

There is always one true inner voice. Trust it. Sometimes it’s hard to know who you are and what you want and whom you likeand why you like that person.The answers change because you’re changing.

[Jackie]

Thanks for the great post!