The journey is arduous

Having a blog begs the question: why?

Why am I doing this? What reason do I have to cultivate a public blog? It's not as if the world is clamoring for more first-person chronicles. There are millions of blogs already, why add to the already stinking pile?

In previous blogs -- all of which contained my real name -- my ostensible purpose was merely to post when I felt like it, keep it casual, nothing serious. Yet, inevitably, this led to my obsessing about if I was posting enough, whether what I posted was "good enough" and just an overall sense of dread and foreboding at the idea of keeping the thing going. I'd also run into situations where what I wanted to write about didn't jive with what I felt I could write about. My name being attached to the blog, and all my friends, family and possible employers having access to it.

Eventually, after a few months, everything would collapse. I'd demolish the entire artifice, deleting or password locking everything -- the online equivalent to clearcutting.

And yet, probably not inexplicably at all, I'm back. Back without a name, but back all the same. I don't know if an anonymous blog -- one I plan to keep from those I know in "real" life -- will be any different from all the others, but two posts in, it does feel different. My hope is that if I end up vanishing for a week or two or write about things that eventually interest me alone, I won't feel that strange sense that I'm letting someone or some group down. I won't feel like my personal brand is at stake. Because inherent in all my blogs -- and really in every creative venture I've attempted -- the primary goal has been to simply please myself.

I do care about approval from the masses. I want what I enjoy about myself to be enjoyed by others, but when you start catering to others first, informing your work with what you think they would like, in my experience that's when the end is near. In this sense, we can all take a cue from Ivan Drago, the Russian colossus in Rocky IV. When Mother Russia turns on the boxer during his fight with Rocky Balboa, he throws a Soviet official from the ring and exclaims, "I fight for me! For me!"

So this is me fighting for me, but I promise not to grab any of you by the neck and toss you from the blog. It's silly to dismiss the opinions of others a priori because the opinions of others are often pretty spot on. It's just that on the Internet, they tend to be fairly scathing. So, I won't be telling anyone to fuck off or accusing people of "just not getting it." These are reactions from people at odds with the fact that they are failing at the most inherent human compulsion -- to communicate. Anyone who starts blogging, myself included, is doing so not simply for himself, and those who claim otherwise are fooling themselves. People like Henry Darger can make these claims. Blog authors cannot.