Going Meta

One of the ways I have reconciled myself to blogging--at this point I no longer threaten to give it up, since such threats have proven fruitless--is by refusing to engage blogging itself as a blog topic. I find my own blog angst inherently unappealing, and surely as uninteresting to others as it is to me, so I refuse to reify it in pixels, and I prefer not to engage in it at all. This blog is, I've come to realize, part of my life, so long as it stays part of my life, and when it's not, it won't be (yes, that is a conceptually if not syntactically Beckettian if not Steinian sentence, and I find it quite humorous that I have alluded to Beckett twice this week, when really I am so not the Beckett type, despite the nominal off rhyme) (clearly, to assay blogging in a meta kind of way, which is what I am about to do, albeit briefly and with little insight, requires me to gird my loins in pretentious discourses that signal the meta) (that's the self-conscious "look, I do know what I'm doing here" moment) (in case you didn't notice).

I've read a few blog posts recently that probe questions of identity, self-revelation, and audience with respect, explicitly or inferentially, to blogging (see here and here). What's interesting to me, given the level of angst I have about so many aspects of existence, is that these questions don't particularly bother me. There are things I don't blog--the content of my work, my intimate relationships except in a humorous or loving way, things that would embarrass or upset anyone besides me--and there is my (surely transparent) anonymity schtick. But aside from that, I feel like I'm pretty much me. Indeed, one of the reasons I don't blog under my real name is that I don't want random people who know me (as opposed to random strangers) to see how much time I spend thinking about hopelessly trivial matters.

Part of this comfort with my blogging self may have to do with the fact that I have consciously made this a "what I think" blog, rather than a "what I do" blog. I certainly talk about some things I do (I recall a string of posts, probably in the spring of 2005, because we were still in No Longer Red State, about the girls being sick and me losing my mind), but for the most part it's not a diary kind of blog. I don't care about keeping anyone updated about what's going on, unless I feel like it. I'd rather bloviate about the Red Sox, Britney, Ian McEwan, and politics, which are indeed, basically, what I think about (I also think about work, and the issues surrounding my work, an enormous amount, and sometimes that is a frustration, not to be able to blog those issues in the way I really think about them, but I can live with that) (and of course I think about my kids, who sort of bridge the think/do divide, in life and in blog).

Hmm, now I see why I don't get meta. This is indeed boring and not very insightful. I was just thinking about it, and, you know, this is a "what I think" blog. And now I'm having a meta-blog-anxiety moment, because I really want to end by putting out the question of whether the blog me seems like the real me, but then there's the awkwardness of the unanswered blog question, and the blog question's implicit goal of pulling in comments....ack, must stop now so as not to fall into abyss of blog angst...

Edited to add: So I just skimmed the last few weeks of posts and of course the think/do divide is fallacious, but, whatever...

Edited again to add: It should go without saying, but clearly won't, that this is all about me and my blog (sometimes non) angst, not anyone else's blog, blogging, identity, or angst.