blogcutter

In my November 17 post, I deliberated whether to renew my paid account or take a temporary or permanent leave of absence from blogging on Dreamwidth. Well, I'm still here, folks, at least for now. My paid account lapsed on December 11 but a week later, a kind-hearted Secret Santa renewed it for another year.

This crisis of faith was sparked by an upsetting comment I received from another Dreamwidth member. I have successfully banned this person from commenting directly on any of my posts but they are still out there, woven into the warp and the woof and the meow of our dysfunctional Dreamwidth family. Well, it's a truism that you can't choose your family, nor can you help it if you're a bastard. And if you tug on a loose thread and oust it from the fabric of a family or a community, there's always the risk that the family or community could eventually unravel completely.

OK, enough of that dreadful extended metaphor. In addition to banning the person from commenting on my blog, I also asked a Dreamwidth administrator to investigate what I believed to be a violation of the Member Code of Conduct. The administrator informed me that Dreamwidth encourages expression of a wide variety of views and that derogatory comments are not considered a violation of the Code even if they are rude, aggressive and insulting. To their credit, they did also say that if I was dissatisfied with their services or felt there were certain things they could be doing better, I could send my suggestions to their Feedback mailbox. I'm considering doing just that.

So there it stands. I'll probably continue mostly as I have for the past 13 years, except that I may be a little more circumspect when it comes to posting on hot-button issues.

That concludes my end-of-year update.

I've been pondering this one for quite a while. There are of course many kinds of writing and many different purposes that may be associated with each. Here I'm going to focus on what's probably the most personal one, an individual's diary or journal. What is its purpose? How does the paper-based version relate to its online version in the form of a blog? An article that appeared in Lithub earlier this year got me seriously thinking about this:

https://lithub.com/on-the-sanctity-of-a-journal-on-private-writing-in-the-age-of-public-content/

Like many young people, I started keeping a diary some time in adolescence. I wrote regularly (though not daily) in it throughout my teens and into my early twenties. Sometimes I'd write pages and pages at a time, and not again for weeks on end. Other times I'd write for several days in a row, either briefly or at length.

But then, as the demands of my studies and jobs and youthful shenanigans and adult responsibilities assumed centre stage, the journaling trailed off entirely, except for the occasional special-purpose journaling: travel, pregnancy, dreams, books read, scraps of dreadful poetry...

After retirement, I once again had some spare time. Not as much as I'd envisioned, perhaps, but still...

And that's when I started this blog. I quickly realized that an online blog is not quite like its paper-based cousin.

A central question I grappled with was WHY I was doing it. Was it for myself? For the blogosphere at large? For my own circle of present and future friends, family and acquaintances, geographically near and far?

Then came COVID and lockdowns and more time at home. Although I'm definitely on the introvert side of the personality scale, I still have that need for connection with others. And the need to make a difference, to have some impact, at least in small individual and local ways, when everything seems hopeless and we feel helpless to work towards the changes we wish for.

If you're a "pantser" or a stream-of-consciousnss type of writer, then perhaps blogging is the ideal medium for you. Maybe the so-called social media are even more ideal. But for those of us who prefer to plot and plan and think before we speak, blogging involves some adjustments, perhaps in scrawling notes and organizing them a bit before going online, or perhaps in trying to be a little more spontaneous when writing.

Spontaneity certainly has its risks, however, as we see with some of the vicious backbiting and flame wars that occur on social media. Do we censor ourselves in online blogging? I'm pretty sure I do, and sometimes quite unconsciously. It's one thing to do a thought dump on paper when you can always shred it later or even if you don't, there may be very little chance of it falling into the wrong hands. It's quite another thing if your words are misconstrued and you end up being fired, excommunicated, deported, sued for hate speech, libel or worse! Yes, I know you can adjust your privacy settings and stuff, but ultimately there are still these "forever technologies" threatening to take over the world...

I guess there are uses for both the paper-based and the online versions, depending on what you want to do and what sort of audience you are aiming for, amongst other things. The medium is certainly not independent of the message, but I'm not quite convinced that it IS the message, either!

This blog is 6 years old today. I started it on March 25, 2012 - also a Sunday. Is it living up to my expectations? That's something I'll need to reflect on a bit more but overall, I'd say yes.

Social media have exploded over the past decade and while some diehard Facebookies are threatening to cancel their FB accounts in the wake of the Cambridge Analytics scandal, I understand that that's easier said than done and I'll believe it if I see it. Meanwhile, I've bought myself one of those T-shirts that reads "Yes it's true - I'm not on Facebook!" And I can say with a certain amount of pride that it IS true. Meanwhile, I really like the whole idea behind Dreamwidth Studios and I plan to continue to support them, even if my blog entries are not as frequent as they used to be. There are still all kinds of nifty features to Dreamwidth accounts and I've barely scratched the surface in terms of exploring and experimenting with them. I'm also very confident with Dreamwidth that my personal data will not be sold and exploited for crass commercial and other nefarious purposes.

In my last entry, I described a recent haul from a second-hand book sale and while I'm looking forward to getting into them, they were temporarily put aside as I had quite a few library books on the go at the time. So in the remainder of this post, I'll write about my thoughts on those.

To My Trans Sisters (c2018) An "inspirational collection of letters written by successful trans women" sharing lessons learned on the journey to womanhood. Some of the characters I found sympathetic; others less so. After all these years, I'm still not so sure I understand the whole "trans" phenomenon, even though current thinking - by doctors, psychologists and the like - seems to be that those who feel they were born into the wrong sex or gender should be indulged to whatever extent they deem necessary for their mental health and survival! To me, you can be whoever you want in your fantasies so why should the outward manifestation be such a big deal?

So You Want to be a Robot: 21 short stories (c2017) - All written by someone who considers "themself" gender-fluid, they all deal to some degree with gender dysphoria and even species dysphoria. Heaven forbid we should all end up as cyber-people, but that's what some of the folk in these stories seem to want! Although it's certainly not MY fantasy, I nevertheless found the stories quite riveting!

The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw (c2007) - This was a kind of memoir of growing up in the UK and the important role popular music played in Lavinia's life. Born in 1962, she's a few years younger than I am but her descriptions of events in her life and songs with particular resonance for her nonetheless struck some responsive chords in me.

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield (c2017) - A very thought-provoking book with chapters on all the technologies that are becoming so pervasive in our lives - 3D printing, Blockchain/Bitcoin, virtual and augmented reality, and what they do to our society in terms of social values and how we spend our time. While none of it was exactly surprising to me, it clearly highlighted the creepy Big-Brotherish and lack or privacy aspect to the world we live in today.

Murder in the Manuscript Room by Con Lehane (c2017) - This murder mystery takes place at New York City's 42nd Street Public Library, somewhere I've long wanted to visit, and features a librarian protagonist, Raymond Ambler. The murder victim is a recently-hired library employee reporting to Ambler's friend and fellow-librarian Adele Morgan, who seems very interested in an Islamic scholar working at the library (and whom many seem to have pegged as the perp).

Longing for Certainty: Reflections on the Buddhist Life by Nyanasobhano (c2003)

Older and Wiser: Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness and Death by Soeng Mu (c2017)

I borrowed the above two titles because I'm currently taking a Learning in Retirement course on Buddhism at Carleton. I have one more class (tomorrow) and then on the final day (April 9), we'll be visiting a Buddhist temple. I still haven't quite decided what I think of the material I've been learning. On the one hand, I think there's definitely a value to the whole meditating thing, especially in this age of social media and everyone being glued to their phones all the time. There are also definitely some positives to be had in the whole idea of accepting things as they are, with equanimity, as well as being less "grasping" and materialistic. But should we just abandon any thought of changing the world, or at least trying to get things to be more to our liking? And I don't know that I totally see craving as being a bad thing either - what Buddhism labels "craving" you or I might think of as having something to look forward to or to cheer us up! Is it really true that when you satisy a craving, you just crave more and more and it's always out of reach? I don't think that's how things are for me.

Anyway, those are just a few stray thoughts on what I've been reading of late. Now I've gone back to The Atheist Muslim (Ali Rizvi) and As the Years Go By: Conversations with Canada's Folk Pop and Rock Pioneers (Mark Kearney and Randy Ray). I'll probably put aside Simone de Beauvoir's Letters to Sartre while I indulge in Alan Bradley's latest Flavia De Luce mystery and Linda Wiken's Marinating in Murder.

Till next time!