A Very Brief History of My Blogging Experience

Last May, I pointed out that I may have fewer posts in lieu of my return to the university. Perhaps I may have to take that announcement back. Professor Jonathan Jurilla encouraged us to blog twice a week for our theory and criticism class starting this week.

Taking part in this class exercise should help liven up this virtual space, hopefully, with the participation of my classmates and our teacher. Not that there are no visitors here, no? Since I started (Mis)readings August last year, I think can identify a few regular readers.[1] Of course, it wasn’t that way always.

I published my first blog four or five years ago as an extension of my Friendster profile.[2] I cannot remember why I did it. All I can recall is that I posted a few diary-like reciting of a day’s events, convoluted political statements I wrote for my college organizations, and sometimes even juvenile poems.

Even then, blogging was not so new a phenomenon at all. But for me, it was still a novel experience that was quite different from simply jotting down your thoughts in a diary. The blog is public. When I published an entry, there was always this thought at the back of my head that perhaps some unknown person will read it.[3]

Whereas previously I had to mail letters to the editor to share my comments in the dailies, the blog offered a direct platform for my views on the internet. While the ability to leave comments on my posts offered the possibility of instant interaction with my supposed audience.

Soon enough, I moved on to Blogspot which appeared to offer more features than Friendster. More and more people published their own blogs. Yet it was around that time when the freshness of blogging began to wear out for me. Blogging became a common thing for those among my generation and social class, i.e. among the youth of petty bourgeois stock, to have blogs.

As if to compensate for this fact, I was beginning to write as many pieces as possible. With this was a compulsion, which I cannot fully explain, to post my thoughts as quickly as possible. And since I wasn’t always diligent at writing, I acquired the habit of getting articles from other websites or blogs which I found interesting. Then I progressed from reposting whole online articles to simply linking to a bunch of them.

Meanwhile, I gave up Blogspot for WordPress because of its aura of style. Blogging then became not only a matter of posting your insights or describing your life. The question of the blog’s appearance also gained significance. Apart from offering content on a daily basis, a blog must also look good.

To cut the story short (it’s this strange compulsion working again), I stopped blogging for certain reasons and came back late last year with this blog. (Mis)readings features my thoughts on books, literature, reading, and (occasionally) politics. It is in short nothing more than my “Conceit “subjectivized and raising its ugly head online to propagate unlettered opinions to an imaginary public audience.[4] ■

[1] Allow me this occasion to thank you for your (mis)readings and for frequently sharing your thoughts here: Dada aka Baudadárd, Mira of Les Fleurs d’un Livre, Chris AlAswad of Escape Into Life, Guy Savage of His Futile Occupations, Daniel, Max Cairnduff of Pechorin’s Journal, and everybody else.

[2] All of my previous blogs are not anymore online.

[3] Then again, isn’t it that even when we write our diaries we already imagine someone reading it? Who exactly is this someone who grounds my act of blogging, this Other who is supposed to know the deepest secrets held in my diary? Here I see an affinity with how Jacques Lacan understands the unsent letter as the only letter that effectively reaches its destination. “[O]ur idea is too precious to be entrusted to the gaze of the actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth so we send it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we can absolutely count for understanding and appreciative reading.” (Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman, London: Picador 1994, p. 172)

[4] Last December, I also volunteered to contribute for Global Voices Online upon the invitation of Mong Palatino, our youth representative in the Philippine Congress (although I haven’t been active in posting lately).