Well, I've had a lot that I've wanted to record for posterity here, but I've been too busy obviously.  So I'll try to cover what I can here and hopefully catch up before the end of the Christmas season.

 

Around the time of my last post, I had been reading a lot of negative commentary about blogs in Web articles, listservs, message boards, and other weblogs.  It had me thinking about my own site here and weblogs in general.  I'm not offended by teenage hijinks being posted online for public consuption as others are.  Nor do I think that only those weblog sites that are done by professionals are the only ones worth reading.  I think it's marvelous whenever anyone choses to write down what they think and feel, reguardless of whether in private or public, handwritten or typed.  We should be encouraging people, the future generations especially, to write rather than discourage them.  People who write are engaging themselves more in life than those who don't. 

 

Even if no one reads the public posts today, what about future generations of scholars looking for a glipse into our everyday lives?  What about having a record for yourself as you get older and futher removed from the activities and thoughts of today?  What about offering your own decendants an opportunity to know you as you were?  These are all the reasons I have kept a journal all of these years, and why when given the opportunity I jumped to public display on the internet. 

 

Recently I finished reading Roughing It by Mark Twain.  It's a log of his life from July 1861 to Spring 1867.  Some of it is verbatim from the journals he kept at the time.  This is a book which has seen reprinting many times over the decades, as have the other books Samuel Clemmons wrote about different segements of his life.  Imagine what a resource it would have been to have his weblog saved in perpetuity on the Internet?  We could read the post replies made over the decades, showing how our society has or has not changed in its views since his time. 

Sure, public posting has changed what I write in some ways.  Every once and I while I would write what material possessions I desired at the time, then after a birthday, Christmas, or other such opportunity for presents I would compare my loot to what I had said I had wanted.  It was a fun exercise.  However, I don't dare do it here, for fear that people would feel required to obtain such things for me.  I don't want my posts to be potential shopping lists, that's not what those old entries of mine were intended for.  And I still refuse to have a Private or Protected post, or create a second journal either online or elsewhere. 

 

Also, I know I post more about my rp sessions than I used to, solely because post repliers have expressed an interest in them.  Or at least I do when I actually get around to making a post about them at all.  When I don't do them I feel guilty, even though I know the people who read this aren't going to be upset if I don't.  It's silly, I know.

 

But all that doesn't mean that I'm going to give this up, nor do I think that the apparent weaknesses of this medium outweigh the strengths of it.  In fact, the fact that people are interested in replying at all encourages me in the belief that future generations have a right to the public display of my thoughts today.  And yes, sometimes the immediate feedback can be helpful.  That's something one won't get if one's writings aren't public. 

 

You are Dungeon Master, the Guide. A very powerful
wizard, you have lots of knowledge but can only
give away bits of it at a time.

Which Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon Character Are You?
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