4.05.2013

Back on Blogspot.

I've found myself lately with the urge to make posts of a certain length, with a certain amount of organization, spanning a certain range of topics. I can't be bothered to type them out on Tumblr, where anything longer than five paragraphs feels like an inconvenience to readers. The lit blog itself has taken a weird turn, in that it's being followed by a great number of people who I don't think even know who I am -- the interest seems to be less in me personally and what I'm doing, and more in just general bits about Korean literature. Which is fine. And yes, it is my blog, and I can do whatever I want with it, but it feels awkward. Like standing up in the middle of a public bus and announcing that I'm feeling a bit hungry, because today's school lunch wasn't quite to my liking. That kind of a feeling. If you can imagine that. Like it's not the time or the place.

So I think I feel Blogspot calling again. Finally.

I know people get confused with the constant blog rotation, and I don't know how to explain where it comes from, other than a very distinct sense of spaces. I tried, for a good while, to make a decent space over on Tumblr, but there's this weird obsessive insistence on "community" there that I just don't really want much to do with anymore. I don't think I've ever, for example, received an email from a Blogspot reader who wanted to know what I thought my blog contributed to the internet, and to personally request that I reconsider my presence on this blogging platform, because I'm not friendly enough with enough of their personal friends. Or weird messages implying that I'm somehow obligated to invite these people who read my blog (whose blogs I do not read, by the way) into my offline life, and to be polite and gracious while doing so, or else I'm a snob. Tumblr has a lot of great folks on it doing a lot of great things, but it also has a very bizarre (to me) nosy aunt/high school/small town quality to it a lot of the time. People automatically assume that because they read your blog, you are as obligated to them as if you had formed a personal relationship with them.

That's not a view that I, personally, share. And it gets a little tiresome for me, trying to navigate it. 

And as I move back toward more personal, perhaps "boring" posting habits, I also feel a bit guilty doing so using Tumblr's format, which forces your "followers" to scroll through every last thing you write to see whatever else is on their dash that day. This space is more comfortable for that, because people choose, specifically, to come here.

So. Whatever. We will see how it goes. I'm working on a couple of posts now about some widely differing subjects which I hope to have up by the end of the weekend. But it should be a pretty busy weekend, so who knows?


4 comments:

TLP said...

For what it's worth, I'm really glad you're back.

I don't follow your tumblr, but I have read through most of your posts on here. I just really like the way you write.

And I also like the things you choose to write about in this space. The way you approach things makes me think about my own life in different ways, which is nice, because I see some parallels between your life and mine.

For the last few months, I've been checking every few days, hoping you'd post something, but slowly resigning myself to the fact that you were probably done blogging. As you can imagine, I got rather excited to see your two new posts :)

I debated staying invisible because I feel like it would be odd to hear a stranger saying thank you for blogging again. But I thought I'd pipe up just in case you like hearing from your usually silent readership. Good luck with grad school preparations and everything else!

kawaii_candie said...

eheheh, where's the "like" button? :p

I also don't follow you on tumblr, or know you in real life. But I teach English in Japan so I feel like our situations are a bit similar, and I like reading about stuff like that. I also like that your experience is a lot different from mine since it's in Korea. makes me learn new things :p

I don't think you have to bother or care what other people think. it's your blog, you write what you like, if people don't like it they don't have to read it. End of story.

Welcome back!

Sidney said...

i'm going to pretend you're doing this because i quit tumblr. excuse me while i allow myself to have an inflated ego. have i mentioned how nice it is to be done with that place?

I'm no Picasso said...

Thank you all very kindly for taking the time to leave a message. I'm happy to be back. Things were just so scattered for a while, and they still are, but rolling ever closer to resolutions on all fronts, I hope.

Sid, I can imagine. I don't think I'll leave Tumblr. For the most part, I'm just ignoring it. It feels nice to be learning how to do that, as well.