Blog-vent on blogging

I am facing a crisis in my blog life. What to blog on? My basic dilemma is that of audience. Every writer has to know who he's writing to, and that's my problem.

First, what do people want to know? I could blog about my life and friends here, since everyone who reads this (other than one person) is not at Notre Dame and knows very little of my life here. But do you care? And would that be interesting? I always aspired to having a blog that actually said something, not just was a narrative. So the question of audience here, is what does the far-away nature of my audience mean for my blog?

Second, there's the problem of the diversity of the audience and what I can write on. I've decided too many people read my blog. I don't talk about just Rice stuff, because not everyone reading is a Rice kid, and that would bore you all. I don't talk about my family, because my sister reads my blog. I dont talk about deep faith stuff like Dallas and David, because not all my blog readers are Christian so that would probably bore them. Or, conversely, I don't talk about deep faith stuff because some of my blog readers are Christian, and sometimes I prefer not talking with them about it. Thankfully only Steve from here at the Dame reads my blog, so I can vent about stupid things that set me off here, like militant Republicans and annoyingly oblivious classmates and just generally people who have never met a non-white person in their entire lives (and I know Steve won't mind, you're the coolest, Steve). But I can't shake the feeling that a blog is a one-sided conversation with everyone I know...

Third, the problem is that you all know me. Why is this a problem, you ask? Well, it's a lot easier writing to a nebulous audience than an actual audience who knows you. You can't lie, you can't make up wild pasts for yourself, you can't make yourself sound cool (because everyone reading knows the truth: you aren't). Of course, on the upside it's a lot more fun to write to an audience that knows you, and sometimes it's a lot easier because you can leave out a lot of explanations and people still understand.

Lastly, a non-audience related problem, and that is topics for blogging. There is only one time when blog topics come easily: when life is somewhat, but not very, busy. When life is very slow, it seems there is nothing to write about. When life is really busy, there are first too many possible topics to blog on, and second, no time to blog on any of them! My life has been too busy and changing in the past few months to keep up with the five thousand topics I want to blog on. I was looking through my entries the other day and there has been a marked decline in quality of writing, quality of topics, quality of blog in general in the past few months. That's saddening to me, pretty much just because I'm vain and self-centered and want my blog to be cool. That and I want to keep my loyal readers interested.

All this, and I still love my blog. I don't know if I would love it if no one read it or commented. What does that say? I don't really care, because you all are still reading it, so I don't have to think about that yet. But from one blogger to another, I'm sure you've all faced these problems. Glad to have had my first blog-vent on blogging. It makes me feel very blog-vain, but whatever.