Blogging-4-Life: Looking Back & Taking Stock, Names & Numbers

Looking Back & Taking Stock, Names & Numbers

I have been blogging in one form or another for decades. I started in political contexts, way back in the early 1990's. I think we called it Bulletin Boards (BBS). I don't recall. Were they, themselves, successors to the Arpanet? So much has happened since then…

I especially recall the BBS of the Los Angeles Times (LAT). There were numerous topical threads moderated by the paper and delineated by on-going news issues. I inhabited none so voraciously as the one dedicated to the wars of Yugoslavian Dissolution. That's what I called that theater of strife. Conventionally, it was known as Serbia vs. Bosnia-Herzogina and, later, Serbia vs. Kosova.

Real blood was flowing in the urban streets and country roads of Eastern Europe. Ethnic cleansing was threatening to inundate neighboring nation-states with tsunami-sized floods, of refugees. This thread of the LAT BBS was polarized over the fight to get Bill Clinton to finally fricking act. In the BBS, my side sought to staunch the wound of European civilization with our blue, black and red ink.

I remember only a couple of names from that period. There was a William Bradley (Blake? Bradford?). I think that was his name. He was impressively well-versed in Western diplomatic and political history. He and I fought shoulder to shoulder against a Russian Greek-Orthodox, named Yelena who was the leading pro-Serb scribe. She was a graduate student in clinical psychology in Kansas. Yelena knew well both her history and how to bring enough heat into our 'discussions' that I occasionally had to repair to bookstores to replenish my ammo. There were six to eight others, in the thick of our thicket, plus additional peripheral snipers who commented once a week.

Ours was but one of many threads the LAT ran. The others got out of hand frequently. For some reason the Times failed to keep on top of the excesses of participants. A few times the LAT just had to shut all threads down for a day or so, in order to do the janitorial work of sweeping detritus from the floor and excrement from the walls.

Eventually Bradley, who had been terminally ill with some diagnosis he never disclosed, fell silent. At about the same time the LAT gave up its experiment with bulletin boards for good. I was left with a lot more to say and no where to say it and no one to offend.

I went dormant.

Until Geo Bush arrived on the scene. Then I set up a series of all-politics-all-of-the-time blogs, starting in March of 2004. A few months after Bush became an ex-POTUS, I lost my voice again; but not the urge to write. I still have that.

These pages give me much pleasure. Gone is the sturm und drang of my earlier venues. I have discovered a new-found curiosity about another side of living my life. Curious and curiouser! I acknowledge we may never be able to escape the game of politics; involuntarily we are all players and stakeholders in the political bowl which is always in season, 24-7. Nevertheless, I sense a growing urgency to record and explore personal experiences and learnings past and present.

Another, newer problem dogs my tracks.

All this time I have written and posted pseudonymously. The need to use noms-de-guerre was predicated on the fact that I did not want any offense, and there were many that I committed on the 'Net, to impinge on my real life. For example, would I have to be called to answer in person at my location of employment for anything written in some obscure context in some equally obscure corner of the Web? That seemed reason enough to resort to nicknames.

But more seemed at stake. I did not relish that my life in hyperspace might impinge on my social life. Was this cowardice? What does it mean not to want to answer personally for my positions written anonymously? Would I be required to think on my feet and verbalize defenses of what I had painstakingly researched and composed? If my real identity became known, would I have to tone things down? Would my site then lose some of its color and turn gray? If my true identity was publicly known, how would I feel about my still anonymous/pseudonymous commentariate? Without my knowing their real identities, I should allow them to know mine? The more I thought about going public, the more I worried about tipping the level playing field to my disadvantage.

It is important to remember that whatever activity one chooses to do to pass the time is not necessarily an universally-valued activity. That is sure true of the blogosphere. The whole subject of blogging, I have discovered, is a major-league on-off switch in casual conversation; toggled on, and most of the time your companions turn you off, by changing the subject or moving on. Maybe blogging is too seemingly self-indulgent; maybe it's akin to offering a slide show of photos from your last vacation?

Blogging may not be an unnatural act, but it certainly is an acquired taste. Those of us whose 'night job' is located on the dark side should be content to engage in our commute without carpooling.

In the end, we may not hope for the best of both worlds: you can't be both known and unknown. Isn't blogging an exercise to enjoy writing as a process and as a private enjoyment? Shouldn't that be enough? A blogger whom I recently encountered sums up:

It's gratifying to have a readership and even more gratifying to have an attentive commenter, but it's rare that any writer can have both anonymity and a sizeable audience. So I agree that if you choose anonymity, you have to be content with writing for its own sake.

Point well taken. I would not want to think it's out of cowardice that I try to remain pseudonymous. I prefer to think it's all about modesty: I just don't think I'm ready for Prime Time.