Writing as a Sinking Ship

I must admit, blogging as a new experience for me has been a little like jumping from a sinking Titanic into the icy waters of the sea in winter. Let me explain.

All of my shared writing that I’ve done up to now has been for a very specific audience- in most cases an audience of one- my teacher. I have been a very efficient learner growing up about what people want to hear. Teachers want to know that you understand the presented material, and that you can use it in correct context. This includes subjects directly related to writing, like grammar and literature, or indirectly related to writing, like chemical engineering. This type of writing, if published openly, would probably either bore most people, or be irrelevant enough for them not to want to read it. This type of writing is also ultimately self-alienating, and somewhat like going down with the Titanic in the way it confines individuals.

For me, the publishing of work to the open internet has a duality of effect on my attitude when composing. It is frightening because the audience could end up being anyone from my classmate to my mother, but it is freeing because I don’t feel pushed to please one person or type of person. The frightening part is coupled to by indoctrination by parents and teachers at a young age that the internet is a place where you must always be careful when inputting information; anyone connected to your past, present, or future could be reading. The freeing part allows me to write more about how I perceive things, and less how my audience may want to perceive things. Because the audience is an open one, I don’t even try to cater to their background, circumstances, beliefs, or biases. Instead, all I can do is humbly present my own experience and understanding with reasoning, and resign to the fact that there will be some people that vehemently disagree and some people that see my perspective as it is. The frightening part of publishing to an open internet is akin to jumping into a freezing sea, as it both hurts and can easily paralyze a person by the shock. Jumping in, however, allows an escape from a sinking ship and a way of freedom.

As a self-critique, I am not taking full advantage of the idea of posting to the internet as an open source. The benefits from openness are realized on my blog, but not necessarily the benefits of the internetness. The internet is a network of two-way streets, and I have not yet fully transferred the advantage of this structure to my blog. One thing that has happened is an exchange between individuals in the class reading and commenting on fellow classmates’ blogs. Ideally (and if each of us had more free time) we would fully extend this utilization outside the nucleated community of our classroom and outward to incorporate published writing and other media of outside sources that have meaning to us individually elsewhere. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in a day, and for now it may be satisfactory for me to benefit from reflective writing on a blog as a way to get used to the open waters that invite me to express myself more freely.