Blogging about bloggers' blogs

So I've been thinking lately about why I keep a blog. Is it to keep a record of when and what I do for myself? Is it just to keep myself writing consistently? Is it to let friends and family know that I haven't yet become a hopeless shut-in? Or is it to communicate with strangers who will be wowed by my subtle cynicism on big city living and ability topost photos that I didn't take? I think at this point, it is only some mix of the first three things. And I've decided I'm okay with that.

For a while, I'd entertained the idea that people I don't know would enjoy my thoughts (which I guess is the goal of any would-be writer). I think I'd hooked one for a while, but she drifted off around the same time that I stopped reading her blog (which probably had something to do with it.) The thing is, I read a number of blogs very faithfully and almost all of these blogs are from strangers or near strangers since only a handful of my friends really write. So I guess because I do this, it surprised me when strangers or near strangers didn't stumble on my blog, or stay when they did stumble.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of this post; however, it's one of my favorites of the "50 incredible animal photos taken in 2011" that has been circulating the Internet lately.

Consequently, I've been trying to figure out what it is that causes me to continue to read certain blogs, and I've come to a conclusion. The blogs I read regularly very in theme from food to television and even several Christian housewife blogs (more on that in a minute), and I realized that none of them are really terribly interesting or special, but that they all have one thing in common: they post daily. Well, if not daily, they post on a very strict schedule. I work in an office job and am in front of a computer with some downtime five days a week. I like having blogs that I can reliably check each morning and know that they will have new posts. That really is the entire draw.

On the subject of Christian housewife blogs (were we not on the subject? well, we are now!), I started noticing I was reading a number of these. It started with just a handful of Mormon mom blogs, and then has expanded to any number of conservative women writers. There's one in particular who is fairly political and routinely updates with views that are the antithesis of my own. The only thing she has written that I have ever agreed with is that people should probably eat less sugar and more whole foods. But for some reason, even when her anti-feminist views frustrate me, I still keep reading it daily. I guess it's just interesting to see how the other half lives. Most of my friends are also city-living, godless singles without kids so it's interesting to see another perspective on life.

Or maybe it's not interesting at all, and I only find it so because I'm here, predictably at my desk writing book captions and talking to sales reps while somewhere in Kansas City some woman I don't know is baking bread and homeschooling five children. After reading this particular, polarizing woman's blog for a while, she frequently talks about how great a housewife her daughter-in-law is and how Christian and feminine and submissive she is. She also mentioned that her daughter-in-law was writing a book, so I continued my voyeuristic stalking and discovered she too had a blog. I had assumed it would be along the same lines and that she would be a carbon copy of her mother-in-law, but the thing is, she's actually a fantastic writer, a really interesting person, and doesn't at all define herself solely by her faith or her husband or her job as a housewife, although all of these things do help inform her writing. Which is really neither here nor there, but it does remind me why I enjoy reading the blogs of strangers to begin with.

In the end, I guess none of my conclusions or musings are terribly helpful to me in my hopes of getting people I don't know to read because I have no interest in updating every day or in updating with something just for the sake of doing so. So I guess I'll stick with those loyal readers I do know and treat this blog as a way to keeping a record of what I do for myself, as well as for anyone else who cares to read them. Maybe it will evolve beyond that at some point, but for now, that's where we are, and I'm enjoying that.

True, if slightly dull, confessions

The weeks seem much longer now that summer's coming. I just find it so much more of an imposition on my time to be in an office all day when the weather is lovely-like. I spent a good hour yesterday on lunch sitting in Madison Square Park basking in the sunshine.

My friends and I sat in the shade of this. It's an excellent place to observe people appreciating the artistic exhibition. And by "appreciate" I mean the singular reaction we saw was every few minutes a person would come up and touch the neck with their palm to see what it is composed of and then knock it with their fist to see if it was hollow. Humans, be they young or old, all have the same reactions to giant sculptural heads in public parks it seems.

The gorgeous weather has zapped me of all creative energy. (Yep, that's really the excuse I'm going with.) I had no ideas of things to write about today. At least not until my daily blog stalkings uncovered a previously unknown blogger convention of having periodic confessionals where the blogger reveals inane truths about themselves as a I writing exercise. I frequently feel the need to divulge minor failings of my character, but as I was raised without Catholic guilt, I've never had an appropriate outlet. Thus, today I'm purging myself of minor truths that may or may not qualify as actual confessions.

1) I enjoy hearing people lying on cell phones. When I hear someone telling someone they have to ring off because they're "about to enter a subway" when I can plainly see they're waiting in line at Shake Shack in no danger of losing reception, it makes me oddly happy. I feel like I'm somehow an accomplice of this stranger. That I know something about them that they keep from even their beloved cell phone contacts.

2) Although I'm in no way suicidal (and not trying to channel Christopher Walken), sometimes when I'm a passenger in a moving vehicle, I feel the urge to open the door and roll out into traffic. When this happens, I lock the car door so that I don't accidentally do it.

3) It says on my resume that I speak "social Afrikaans" when in reality I speak only enough Afrikaans to hit on someone. I can ask "Are you single?" (Is jy beskikbaar?) or tell someone they have a cute butt (Jou boukikes is ongelooflike), but beyond that my overall communication skills are lacking. I blame my Afrikaans teacher for this as her teaching style was to provide us with ways to get Afrikaans boyfriends and girlfriends as she insisted that was the best incentive to learn. I'm counting on it never coming up at a job interview. Or that the place I'm interviewing has a relaxed sexual harassment policy.

4) My month-to-month calendar is nearly always half a month behind. I usually only notice when I try to determine a specific date and then wonder when they moved President's Day to April.

That seems like enough hard-hitting honesty for today. I hope you all feel you know me a little better. It's nice to feel purged on this lovely Friday. Also, feel free to leave any small confessions of your own in the comments.