I have no idea what got me onto this topic, but a few weeks ago I opened my mobile Scrivener app and started jotting down bullet points on why I keep two separate blogs. This is the squished-together result.
It started (I think) with this website, shortly after the pandemic started (I think), with texting a friend about taking the blog-plunge and about finding a unique name for a website that I could stick with. The purpose was to force myself to at least try a blog of some sort. A lot of people seem to be into the “commonplace blog,” so I just went for that. I looked at dozens of different themes, but this one (Independent Publisher) just fit perfectly, especially since it pretty much looks like an online notebook. No muss, little fuss.
As a commonplace blog, ninety percent of what gets posted here is quotes and links to articles and books I like. (It really helps to keep track of them. Sometimes I go back and read some of these posts and I have no memory of ever reading or posting them. And while I mainly post them as a way of keeping track of them, it’s also the best way I can find to share them. The thing is, I think that almost everything I read is worth reading, which means it’s worth sharing, and if I had it my way, I would be blowing up everyone’s phones all day long with links and quotes. No one wants this. A public place where anyone can read excerpts or follow links if they want is much better.) And sometimes, I try to write something that seems worth saying. Even these, however, aren’t usually attempts at public writing so much as exercises in discovery, either of the topic at hand or writing as a practice itself. The way I have put it before is this: Essentially, everything that I put online is for me. But it helps that it’s pubic—for family, friends, or anyone else—so that it at least can be for others. I also think that it does something for me (epistemologically?) to do personal thinking and writing in a public way.
The “micro blog” followed about a year later (I think). I have not had any sort of social media for years, and when I was leaving Maine to travel, many wanted a way to “follow along.” Micro.blog was the solution, mainly for those family and friends who have asked for some online “social” presence from me. (To be honest, I don’t think most of the people who asked actually follow it. In my experience, for most people, if it doesn’t automatically show up in their Facebook or Instagram feed, it’s too much work. And I have had zero success in getting anyone to transition away from the major social media platforms.) I would add, now, that it is also for whatever online community that may develop, and also just because I enjoy it.
Both of these spaces act, for me, as commonplace blogs. But they each have a different function. Generically speaking, one is for keeping quotes and for writing what little I do write. The other is more of a travel-, book-, and daily-life log.
There is, however, a deeper reason why I keep two blogs. I can’t say that it’s why it started, and I can’t say what got me thinking about it this way, but it certainly seems valid going forward. There’s a lot of talk about the damages of social media, and for a nearly infinite number of reasons. (Again, I don’t know what good knowing any of this, which we’ve known for at least a decade, does. I can think of only one person that I know who has gotten off the major platforms, and only one other who is straight-forward about it.) But one of the more prominent reasons for damage is the way that it paints—encourages us to paint—too rosy a picture of our lives.
I don’t talk much online about personal stuff. I don’t mention that, while I don’t think I’m depressed, I am “down” much of the time; that, while I’ve never really felt like I needed to give up on religion, I struggle deeply with faith; that, while I don’t imagine my own suicide, I constantly think about the ones that did do it; that, while I have a hard time imagining having lived life another way, I can’t help feeling that I’ve let my family and friends (and, frankly, the thing-that-is-my-life) down; that, while I want desperately to be a meaningful force for good, I feel less like a cog in the machine than an ant running around the cogs; that, on the whole, I feel stuck with more regrets than achievements. You aren’t likely to read about those thing here—but you are likely to catch intimations of them. That’s because the things that get posted on this blog are things that speak to that person.
On the other hand, life is full of simple and beautiful things. A while back, I was listening to a conversation between Kathryn Schulz and Andrew Sullivan on Schulz’s book Lost and Found. At some point in the interview, the two of them briefly lament the way that, in the wake of large numbers of trauma narratives, which are massively important, regular images of happy lives have in some ways become the “object of a lot of skepticism.” And as Schulz so simply put it, “I think that’s very sad.”
I was thinking about this on an early morning hike the other day. One of the reasons I like micro.blog is it’s built-in tendency to encourage authenticity over show. It may be the way the site is designed, or it may be that the design invites a certain kind of person and practice. The best way to explain it might be an example: In my experience, I am not likely to see someone post about “living their best life” at the beach; I am likely to see someone post a picture of a seashell they found and enjoyed seeing while they were at the beach. The difference between those two kinds of posts is, uh… night and day.
So I suppose the one blog is more likely to deal with the harder, deeper things—because life is hard and it has more depth than we ever know. The other is hopefully, simply about more hopeful, simple things—because life is good, and sometimes a nice picture of almost anything that someone cares about can remind you of this simple and hopeful goodness. Life is hard, painful, sometimes very shitty—but still good, still beautiful, still full of the most profound joys.
And so, for me, keeping two blogs helps to add to the dialectic, to “keep it real,” to stir up thoughtfulness and happiness. That’s the hope, anyway.