My trials/attempts/efforts (that’s what essays means) so far have very much less political and moral weight than Saramago’s and are more trivially personal. Maybe that will change as I practice the form, maybe not. Maybe I’ll soon find it isn’t for me after all, and stop. That’s to be seen. What I like at the moment is the sense of freedom."
When browsing through some reviews on goodreads I found a link to Ursula K. Le Guin's blog. The passage above was her very first post. And then two days later by chance I started reading her book No Time To Spare which I only realised later was a collection of her blog posts. Only several chapters in and I'd already so delighted by it. They were snippets of her thoughts and her daily life and I really enjoy them. I was reading both Le Guin's book and Annie Ernaux' book in the same day and I found it amazing how I could fall in love with someone through their writing, no matter how simple.
I have been saying over and over again that I wish we're back to the day where everyone had blogs. A lot of times I find myself thinking but I wanna know your deepest thoughts, your rumination, your fascination when all I got was posts and stories on social media which more often then than not are just subtle boast of how successful or happy one's life is. I mean I don't hate it. It just doesn't really mean anything.
It is of course a lot harder today to really take time to sit down and write. Back in the day entertainment was very limited, phones weren't "smart" yet. We had time to sit down with our thoughts and had time to really process them. Today everything is effortlessly within the reach of our fingers. Endless entertainment online, bottomless scroll of social medias, mobile games, etc. Thoughts are easier to be shove down with distractions. Even when we are already sitting down to write, distractions are still there so easy to reach. As much as I like to write, it is hard. It often took me three months to even finish a post. I'm still often amazed of myself back in the day when even on a busy day I still could sit on the bed and write my thoughts out.
Many of my friends stopped writing and deactivated their blogs in order to be more private, not revealing too much especially to newer people we met when we're older. I also am embarrassed of many things I posted when I was much younger and still have many posts I need to set to private. But these days I feel a lot more urgency to write my thoughts than ever. I am a lot older now therefore having more conviction on many things, I understand the world a little better now and I want more to say it. And I want to know other people's thoughts. I am still getting older and the world keeps going and changing, writing can in a way reflect the journey of growing.
And then the word "blog" itself these days seems to be getting slightly negative connotation. I remember reading someone criticising a book by saying the writing feels like a "blogpost writing". What do you even mean? A "blog" is just a medium to put writings online. The quality of the writings will depend on who writes them. I really disliked it when people started migrating to medium.com from their own personal blogs. They put statistics on each writings. How many likes, how many "claps", how many quotes, whatever. Sure with these kinds of platforms it's easier to draw traffic to certain topic of writings, but it feels like another attention seeking competition.
Anyway, I think missing the "blogging" era is in a way a craving for more meaning or deeper thoughts in the midst of endless entertainment, mindless scrolling, and the joy in vanities. With no likes no statistics, just let's be quiet together in conversation.
