Metablognition: Blogging about blogging

I attempted to sneak into the closest thing I have to a hometown last week, only telling the person I came to see that I would be there. Sometimes I do this because I don’t want to feel the tug of too many people wanting to spend time with me and knowing it’s impossible to give them all what they want. Sometimes I do it because I’m afraid no one will care.

But The Pilot found me outside a street show after one too many vodka sours. Screeching, “OmigodLizyoudidn’ttellmeyouwerecomingtotown

whydidn’tyoutellmeImisyousomuch! RAAARRR!” (That’s as close as writing can come to the way he sounds when he’s excited and has had a few beers) he picked me up like a giant redheaded flag, parading me up and down the sidewalk. Settling down, I tried to explain that I was going to call him the next day… excuses ect. But he’d already forgotten to be upset that I didn’t call him when suddenly, or maybe it only felt sudden through my vodka fog, The Pilot whipped out his phone:

“Look. Your blog is on my favorites. I love it.

Reading it makes me wish I was a writer.”

He really said that, Absolutly.

And though he lacks rhythm entirely, his timing was perfect.

I’d been thinking about this blog a lot. Thinking of why I do it, if anyone really reads it and what exactly I’m trying to accomplish by writing it—if in fact accomplishment is an aspect of blogging at all. I used to put one of those stat counters on my blog, measure how many people read it and where they were reading from. It felt like spying. I also found myself disappointed if someone I wanted to be reading it clearly wasn’t. There was the one time I got annoyed that someone read it for the first time right after he hurt me badly; I felt sure he only wanted to know if I mentioned the horrible thing he had done. I stopped spying then.

In thinking about blogging, and then blogging about blogging (metabolognition) I’ve notice that I’ve been holding back. I haven’t shared any of the horrific/wonderful/confusing/tragic stories of dating in my late 20’s and early 30’s. I haven’t shared about returning to school after a ten year absence, living alone for the first time in my life (and fearing my neighbors ever so slightly), or the daily terror that is being a substitute teacher. I write a lot of stuff that I never post. Mostly because they’re strange dreamlike things I’m not sure anyone would care to read.

I worry too much what people might think, at least when it comes to my writing.

I’m going to stop that now.

No more holding back.

Blog, year two:

The good. The Bad. The Ugly.

The Unblogged Blogs.