I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the last few days. I’ve been reading blogs since way back when, when they were called web diaries, I followed the lives of the ‘characters’, when I was fifteen I really did think of them as characters in serialised novels, and readily identified with everything that they were going through with in their dead-end jobs (but working towards creative ones), unsatisfactory relationships – even though, all of that was still yet to come for me.
Yet, ten years later the concept of blogging aspects of my own life makes me feel a little bit uneasy. When I began, I started off writing about cool things that I’d seen or done but not really my place within those events. Yet it turns out that the blogs that I most enjoy reading are the ones that were about people. Showing their authors as fallible, imperfect and aspirational beings. Funnily enough, like me now, they were all twenty-something women trying to find their way in the world.
I suppose, if you wanted theatre reviews you should go to the Guardian and not to http://blahblahbla.blogger.com. So my focus changed, someone got me a proper domain name and I started writing about the things that caught my imagination. Yet this broadcasting of my life still feels a bit awkward and somewhat narcissistic – even if I don’t have pictures of myself embedded in every second post*.
I never really expected that anyone would ever read this, and to be honest I do get really excited when I see my traffic numbers go up, and I will admit that I was particularly pleased when I bumped into a friend/ex-colleague who told me that she had just been telling her friend about something I’d written on my blog.
I guess I’m trying to figure out why exactly I’m doing this: Is it purely to write my life down so that I can figure it out (something I’ve done all my life)? Is it to entertain my friends between pokes on facebook? Or is it some unexplored narcissistic trick in my personality, that like the contestants on Big Brother that desperate need to fling their guts out in order to gain some kind of cringe-worthy notoriety? Let’s hope its not the latter…
Anyway in honor of this very deep, soul-searching post, I’ve decided to share with you some of the blogs that have entertained and inspired me over the years:
pamie.com Pamie has been around for 10 years now, she started out in Texas (working for IBM I think) and now married and a comedy writer in LA, I followed her through a major break up, her comedy show about Anne Heche, a new relationship and her wedding…
La Coquette For the budding fashionista in me, Elizabeth made me believe that Paris was the chicest place in the world. She doesn’t update as much as she used to though.
I found a lot of the blogs on Damn Hell Ass Kings the roster may have changed since I was in high school, but the site remains very strong. It provided massive amounts of distraction throughout my final two years of high school. Particular faves that I found through that site include: Dancing Brave, who is half of Go Fug Yourself and Ultra Tart who is the other half. Plaintive Wail, who is now married to Pamie. There are probably a few more, but these are the ones that were important to me.
Go check these out, but please do come back to me, I track the page impressions – it indicates my self worth…
*I don’t mean to be too hard on these blogs as I occasionally read both of them, and yes they are hilarious (although I don’t think their owners realise just how funny).