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Thursday, October 28, 2004

I’m glad it’s a dreary day because I’m feeling under the weather and this is the best sort of weather to be feeling under.   I’m not sure if I’m coming down with the flu or am just in need of rest.  I was 45 minutes into my exercise class and my muscles started aching, but not in the good way.  So I have headed home early, Dean is going to pick Kipp up from school and I am going to spend the afternoon in bed.   But why blog about this? Why even mention these mundane details of my personal life?    A week or two ago, a chance dose of Mental Multi-vitamin left me with a bitter taste after reading of the disdain they feel for those “dreadful mommy blogs” that focus on the personal.   I have to admit, I don’t read mommy blogs, except insofar as I read my own or Rayne’s or Kristi’s and insofar as they can be classified as mommy blogs, because we have borne children. But while I may neglect the genre, there’s no smug feelings involved. I don’t begrudge other moms their right to keep blogs, in the infinite kaffeeklatsch of cyberspace, any more than I begrudge them their right to exist.  I just like to keep my blogroll, like my life, pared down.   So, I’m not sure where Mental Multi’s scornful, uncharacteristic post came from. I detected some self-loathing, stemming from a lack of personal discipline.  They seemed mad at themselves for having lost a few too many hours in the voyeuristic realm of blogdom & bulletin boards. The only way the writer could absolve herself was to declare “Books are better than blogs!”, thereby setting herself back on bibliophilic track.   Are books better than blogs?  That seems like the ultimate apple/orange comparison.  Books are my daily bread, far moreso than blogs, yet like anything in excess, too many books can be a a hazard. I try not to glut my mind any more than I glut my stomach—(and well know the process of setting myself back on track.)   More valuable than the question of whether books are better than blogs, may be the question which permeates the blogosphere these days.  Why blog at all?  What is your raison d'blog?    My raison is selfish. I'm not out to educate humanity (not yet, anyway).  I figured it out a long time ago, with regards to recipes and experiments in the kitchen.  It’s helpful to me not to have my efforts slough off into oblivion—and enormously helpful to be able to Google those efforts.   With regards to my personal life, it’s comforting not to have my days slough off into oblivion.  I’ve personal journals too—they serve their purpose, but they can’t be Googled, don’t inspire helpful feedback, and don’t offer the thrill of connection with other human souls.   Why write at all? I like the way Vita Sackville-West put it: It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.              comment []9:02:04 AM

© Copyright 2004 L. L. Adams. Last update: 11/1/2004; 7:17:43 PM.