JOURNAL: THE REALITY OF MY BLOG

The internet has got me thinking. A wondrously baffled, confused and hesitant kind of thinking, but thinking nonetheless. My head is fit to burst from the questions flying around it at the moment, and whilst blogging about it may just be a big cliché, I need to get them out. Get them ‘down on paper’…an appropriately ironic statement there.

I’m not really sure why I started my blog. I’ve always been a diary guy, but the diaries of a sixteen year old guy have a vastly different reality to the musings of a twentysomething. A twentysomething with a lot of life under his belt. None of my friends know about my blog. None of my family members do. A few of them know I’m doing something on the internet, but my log-on is password protected, and it’s not like they could ever google and find me. If any of my friends or colleagues (especially colleagues!) ever found this, I’ve always maintained that I would close it down in heartbeat.

The ramblings of here are the most that I’ve shared with anyone. I know I’ve alluded to a lot without expressly talking about it, but I count that as the same. I am far more vulnerable on here. My brick veneer in real life is more a crumbling sandstone. With handholds and footholds to let things get over. My writings are unfailingly honest. It has, in a way, been a lesson in learning not to hide. A practice of letting people in. And it’s been okay. I haven’t come crashing down by any profoundly horrible comments. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite of what I’d expected.

I didn’t ever think strangers would read my blog. It’s like I said before…you can’t just google someone and discover their soul. Especially if their name isn’t their own. You just stumble across people. Or get curious about a commenter. I remember the first comment I ever wrote. I was like ‘Shit, that’s a little bit out there with the blog-solitude ambition’. 

There are many now, who I consider friends. And that’s the thing that’s got me stuck. In times of insanity, whimpering, anger, heartache…my blog-friends have had my back. I haven’t had an army of friends like this in years. When schoolyears drifted, our ‘group’ disintegrated, and the contact dwindled to once every 6 months, or one coffee or email a year.

But here I am, and my fans are my friends..checking up on me. And it’s reality, in a way that I never thought ‘internet chatting’ could be. We live in different worlds, we have different day to day lives. We face different realities every single day…but have this shared cubicle of the internet 

We talk to each other so much that it starts to feel like the truth. I think if I backed out now, something would be missing in my day. And that freaks me out a little bit.

But you can. And I have.

What does this mean for my reality?

I demand truth in every aspect of my life, yet here I am, living pockets of my life online, where my friends are just like me, though inherently anonymous. People I’ve never met…but would in a heartbeat. Am I a nerd for having internet friends? A social weirdo? No. I have friends. I have a life. I have TV nights with my family, brunches and lunches with friends. I dance. I spent my siblings. I sing in the car. People appear to like me.

My reality truly is how all of my experiences combine, mix, stir, mingle and mould with each other… This is a part of my life right now. I don’t know why. I don’t know if something is missing in my other realities. I don’t know what will come of it. But it’s me. And I like that.