Learning to use the medium of weblogging

14 February 2005: Learning to use the medium of weblogging

I intend to write this weblog posting in several stages, intermediately saving it as a draft. Although I wish to begin this post now, I have insufficient time to complete it. Further, I wish to learn to feel in control of how I use this medium. It has only just occurred to me that I have access to what I write here only by internet connection: no internet connection, no access. This scares me a little. It is like storing my personal journal in a library in Newcastle. Having expanded my weblogger personal profile, I spent several hours exploring the user profiles of other webloggers with whom I share some or other characteristic. I realised with excitement that thousands of people have made use of this weblogging site. I realised with sadness that many of them posted only once or twice, after which there is nothing but silence. Some people have written nothing more than a personal profile before disappearing. I began to wonder whether I had missed the party. It seemed that everyone packed up and went home immediately after the US presidential election. I realised that, whilst this weblogging site is a virtual town, it has the ambience of a ghost town. I am uncertain how I feel about it all: overwhelmed perhaps. Disappointed? Unprepared. I do not know how much I shall welcome comment. Do I want dialogue? Can I be bothered to get into dialogue? After all, I know none of these people. To what extent can I trust them? When I was searching through the personal profiles, I came across people with profiles showing interests similar to my own, or tastes in film, or tastes in books, or tastes in music. However, I came across no-one whose profile came remotely close to matching my own. My head says to celebrate my uniqueness. My heart says that I am alone. This sense of aloneness was amplified by the relative absence of people my own age. I guess that weblogging is an activity that belongs more to young people. It excited me that, whilst many (a majority from what I was able to discern) of the weblogs are written by people in the US, there are also many written by people from around the world. Not all of the weblogs are written in English. It was wonderful to see weblogs being written in Japanese (hiragana? katakana?), and I felt a little frustrated and ashamed that I was unable to read them. Some of the webloggers present themselves as very strange people, and I suspected that they wish to show themselves as flamboyant and interesting. Other webloggers present themselves as very serious. In this latter group are people who are/were using their blog to record difficult experiences, such as coping with cancer, or coming to terms with a significant bereavement. I scanned the personal profiles of webloggers with interests and preferences similar to my own, systematically following each interest word and each preference word. At first, I believed that I would be able to peek into the weblogs and lives of only those people whose weblogging space was adjacent to my own in one respect or another. Following this train of thought, I considered editing my profile to propose different interests and preferences, and thereby open up new avenues. However, this idea felt dishonest, and motivated by voyeurism. Moreover, I soon realised that I need only take the personal profile of another weblogger to have available a raft of new interests and preferences words to pursue. This procedure felt less voyeuristic, I believe because not dishonest. I experimented with this procedure a few times, but rapidly felt as though I was acting without direction. I scanned the personal profiles of webloggers with interests and preferences similar to my own, systematically following each interest word and each preference word. Some of my interests and preferences words brought up little contact with other webloggers. I noticed how other webloggers expressed their interests and preferences in ways that were likely to attain a longer reach. An obvious example was that some webloggers, I guess largely webloggers in the UK, used not only the word 'counselling', but also the word 'counseling' (the US spelling). I added the word 'counseling' to the interests section of my personal profile, and found the personal profiles of many more webloggers available for scanning. In the favourite films section, I changed 'Coen brothers' to 'Coen', but it made little difference; and I changed 'Woody Allen' to 'Allen', as a result of which a variety of Allen's were being referenced, and I became confused about the personal profiles I was viewing. Some of the interests and preferences words I used in my personal profile were too general, generating endless personal profiles with nothing much in common. Some of my choices were too maverick, generating a small, widely scattered, disparate mix of weblogger personal profiles, again with nothing much in common. I began to realise that I was searching for my tribe. In what ways could I amend my profile so that I may locate and identify my tribe? I added and amended for hours, but came no closer to my goal. Perhaps they are not out there, although surely they must be. As I added and amended the words I used to describe my interests and preferences, I began to think about how other webloggers would view my personal profile. What do the interests and preferences presented in my personal profile say about me? I have no desire to present myself as someone who I am not, neither less than I am nor more than I am. I have neither a wish to hide or dissemble, nor a wish to inflate myself. I wish to give as accurate a picture of myself as I am able. However, like Picasso's stylised use of oil paint in a painting such as Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon, using the medium takes skill, understanding and insight. For example, I was attracted to the inclusion in the personal profiles of some webloggers of their interest 'flying light aircraft'. I have a short history of flying lessons, albeit seven or eight years ago. Although I carry the achievement of those flying lessons around with me as a part of my personal identity, I can no longer, in all honesty, include as an interest 'flying light aircraft'. As an example of a favourite film, I did not include Wolf, because, as a rule, I do not like horror films. The question for me became, what interests and preferences can I present in my personal profile so that other members of my tribe can find me? What I have presented in this weblog posting is accurate, although incomplete. I shall address other issues on another occasion. I have found it valuable to analyse my experiences, for I have achieved the insight of re-knowing that I am searching for my tribe.

Anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden

13 February 2005: Anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden

For as long as I can remember I have been appalled that British and US military forces could have perpetrated such an horrendous act as the fire-storming of Dresden (13 February 1945). It was not, as a child, that I failed to recognise the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi military hate and destruction machine: the Holocaust (being brought up among Jewish families, I learned about Anne Frank when I was a young child), the Nazi military bombing of Coventry, and the blitzkrieg of London (I was brought up in London in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and saw in my daily life many bombsites, some made, no doubt, by V2 missiles). It was that, as a child, I could not accept that 'my side' had knowingly willed and perpetrated the deaths of so many civilians. Surely that act made 'us' no different from 'them', and therefore as morally debased. I learned about US military forces dropping the only nuclear weapons ever used in war: on Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945). In the late 1970s I learned that Durham, the UK city in which I live, was to have suffered the fate that soon befell Coventry, in retaliation for the fire-storming of Dresden. In the late 1990s I visited Lubeck (famous for its medieval architecture and the literary Mann family), near Hamburg in northern Germany, Berlin (now restored as the capital city of Germany), and Pisa, Italy, to discover that Allied carpet bombing of culturally important cities was not confined to Dresden. Recently, I watched on television part of an interview with Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote Slaughterhouse Five, a book I have not yet read. I believe that the concerns he was expressing so eloquently, are similar to my own. I have three issues: the mass murder of civilians (was a principal purpose of the UK military invasion of Iraq not to locate weapons of mass destruction?); the Philistinic destruction of rafts of European culture; the de facto equation of Allied and Nazi morality.

A first entry

12 February 2005: A First Entry

The first entry of a new journal is, for me, always uncomfortable for being so self-consciously about being the first entry of a new journal. This weblog is a kind of new journal.

I understand much about keeping a personal journal, but know little about weblogging. It feels a little as though I am driving something like a huge waggon for the first time: not only are there are many controls about which I know nothing, but also I fear that the performance of the vehicle will throw up surprises. However, this latter is the principal reason why I wish to write a weblog: to find out what it feels like to do so, and to learn what I am able from the experience. It would feel presumptuous were I to assume that I could achieve competence beyond my already existing IT skills and journalling capabilities, although what I have written also feels like I am bringing low expectations to the experience.

My personal journal is a private document, and I have little experience of sharing its contents. This weblog is a public document, and my thoughts and opinions are open to comment. Past experience of voicing my personal thoughts and opinions regarding anything other than a professional matters is sufficiently unpleasant that it fills me with trepidation to do so. It feels as though I am making myself vulnerable to being hurt again.

Written in this public forum, it sounds to me as though I am pleading to be treated with care. Therefore, a first learning point is that when I express my feelings, my words risk being read as a coded message. This latter is far from the case in my personal journal. Maybe, in fact, people, and not simply other webloggers, from whom one might assume, or at least hope for, some reciprocal care-taking, will not read the expression of my feelings as a coded message. Maybe my fear is my fantasy, based on how I might read similar material. Oh dear! Learning point two: I am self-censoring what I would have written here in my personal journal, regarding the extent to which I bring interpretation to what I read. The privacy of my personal journal means that there is little that cannot be recorded in it. I guess that I have to learn the boundaries of this weblogging medium. Perhaps, more optimistically, I shall also discover the power and capabilities of weblogging .

I have given little thought to how frequently I intend to make entries into this weblog. It will probably be like my personal journal: occasional. I have given even less thought to for how long I shall maintain it. Part of me is inclined for it to continue indefinitely, and part of me wants to experiment with it being time limited. I shall make a decision about this latter once I feel clear in my mind.

I am aware of Thinks, by David Lodge. As a consequence, I feel more self-conscious writing this weblog. A voice (with an English accent) asks whether I am writing this weblog as my version of Thinks. Learning point three: I have written this paragraph after the final paragraph. Unlike in my personal journal, in which the format of each entry is effectively a kind of stream of consciousness, in this weblog I can not only edit as I type, but also revise the entire entry prior to posting, making the process of its creation, and also the final result, more like a web-page. I feel uncertain about whether this program has an on-line spelling checker, and am feeling a little disconcerted because I am used to typing within MS Word, with red and green underlining to help alert me to spelling and grammatical problems. I realise that the box within which I am typing has a variety of controls and instructions above and below, most of which are obvious, but some leading to controls unknown. (Note made later: I have now tried out the unknown control buttons.) Learning point four: what I have just written may be considered boring. I do not write boring text in my personal journal, for what I write is written for my experience of writing it and for my experience of reading it. In this weblog, I am writing with at least some desire to be interesting and/or entertaining, by which I feel confused.

I am finding it hard to think of how to bring this entry to an end. I know that the medium is intended to be informal. I am not really an informal sort of person. I like my SMS text messages to be grammatically correct and properly punctuated. "Loosen up. Live a little" (I must check from which movie this line is taken - my memory says that it is from the night-time kitchen scene in Peter's Friends, but I am unsure, because it is getting confused with the chicken coop scene in The Lady and The Tramp). No, I do not wish to loosen up. I wish to learn. "Okay, then, learn." (Why has this voice in my head a US accent?) Then that is my conclusion: I wish to learn.