I have started using my iPod a lot less. It was starting to make me feel misanthropic, and that’s Nick’s job.
I get to notice a lot more now: the 90-year-old woman muttering about the 80-year-old woman in front of her (“Could we move it along, now? Sometime today?”), the two announcements on the 1 train stopped in the tunnel for 10 minutes (something about explosives at 72nd St.), and the anxious commuter who complained about how they never even make announcements (how do you politely suggest a hearing test?) and then commented that I was overpaying for groceries after seeing the WholeFoods purchases slowly spoiling at my feet (and then I felt less concerned about tact).
The point is that I’m feeling more and more curious about what other people are doing, and now that has naturally extended to what they are writing. So, lately, I’ve been spending some time hitting the “Next Blog” button up at the top of the page [Note: this post, along with all of the others up to April 1, 2007, were originally posted at caroline-in-paris.blogspot.com, which has a "Next Blog" feature that does not exist here].
Stop.
Damnit.
Ignore the button until I’m done.
I have found a few distinct categories, and was surprised by most. There are informational blogs, which confused me. I’m talking about the ones with a couple of generalized entries about, say, fitness, or heart health, or astronomy, or what have you. I wonder if these are created by people who are working their way up to either the money or the design knowledge to create their own website, although I am the first to admit that there may be aspects of ecommerce that escape me. Either way, it’s always jarring to see them next to the intensely personal poetry of depressed teenagers (not to mention middle-aged men who are just now realizing that they, too, have a vulnerable side).
Actually, that brings me to an announcement: there’s someone out there with a blog with “Loneliness” in the title somewhere, with a black-and-white falling-feathers skin. There is a note telling us to click on the feathers to see more, but they aren’t clickable. If you’re out there and you’re reading this, sir, that can’t be helping with your loneliness.
There are blogs that are all images (personal snapshots or professional designs), and I’m still trying to figure out why they’re not on flickr instead, because the one-long-column-with-no-thumbnails thing is not ideal for display. Also, blogger seems to have drawn a huge volume of highly religious people, a lot of very organized people (I found one that is essentially a date book), a couple of terrifying conspiracy theorists, a bunch of folks trying their hands at news analysis as well as movie/music/book reviews, and at least one site devoted entirely to photographs of and discussion about hot cops. More power to you, ma’am.
Many were interesting to glance through, and there was even one that made me want to read the whole thing. I won’t say which, so that everyone can think it might be theirs, except for the Lees, who can know it.
It is a wonderful and relatively new phenomenon to be able to express so much of yourself, while retaining complete control over what form “you” take. And I think that part of my surprise was at seeing people reveal absolutely everything, while others chose to use their platform to shine the light elsewhere. And, inevitably (because an online community is much like any other kind), now I have this nagging worry that I won’t fit in.