The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Blogger

Ned: I want adventure. I want romance.

Bill: Ned, there is no such thing as adventure. There's no such thing as romance. There's only trouble and desire.

Ned: Trouble and desire.
Bill: That's right. And the funny thing is, when you desire something you immediately get into trouble. And when you're in trouble you don't desire anything at all.

Ned: I see.
Bill: It's impossible.
Ned: It's ironic.
Bill: It's a fucking tragedy is what it is, Ned.

--Simple Men

I’m really pretty new to this whole blogging thing. I started in January (not counting a very short stint the month before when I was testing the waters before I did it “for real”). So I’ve only been writing as a blogger for 7 months—just over half a year.

Before that, there wasn’t much I knew about blogging. I can honestly say I’d never read a blog before, unless you count aggregator-style blogs like Metafilter or Fark. I’d glanced at a few friends-of-friends’ poorly written LiveJournal pages. That’s it. I didn’t “get” the whole blogging phenomenon.

So it’s still kind of a surprise to me that one day this past winter I suddenly signed up for a Blogspot account and started writing a blog. I’m still not sure what prompted me to do that. And now I find myself wondering just what I wanted from it. What I thought would happen.

I find myself wondering quite a lot these days, and not only about the blog, what it is I really want.

And it kills me to realize that I still just. don’t. know. Which is so entirely frustrating. I have a feeling of what I want. This feeling is set deep in the core of who I am, and I feel it all the time. It manifests as this certain kind of yearning. But I don’t know FOR WHAT. Sehnsucht. I’ve written about it before.

I was talking about it with someone again just today, in fact. You know that feeling you get when you run into a place or a person for the first time and it’s like you already know that place or person? It has a feel, a scent, a something that just clicks in in this very primal way and suddenly you feel, “I know this. I’m home.” This is what I want. But how do you go after something like that? It’s so intangible, so indefinable.

I’m not actually getting off track here. What I’m trying to say is—I don’t know the reason why I started to blog. I don’t know the reason why other bloggers did. But I suspect what I’m describing above may have something to do with it.

In every blog I read, I notice this often unspoken constant. No matter how funny, how erotic, how practical the topic of the blog is, there’s this same feeling, this something underneath that sets off my nerve center in this very instinctual, sensory way.

There is this underlying yearning. A sort of undefined loneliness and want.

I think all bloggers are lonely. By this I don’t mean bloggers are all lonely losers, outcasts, and social misfits (though some of us proudly wear those tags and make them damn cool). Most bloggers I read have (or have had) good friends, family, lovers, etc. We have lives that are often, at least on paper, rich and full and interesting, even if sometimes we hit roadblocks and difficulties.

No, this thread of loneliness that weaves itself for the blog world, it’s something else. It’s more this feeling of unrequited yearning. For some kind of connection we are just not getting. For some kind of reality we just can’t seem to create. Perhaps for others, not just me, we long for what feels right, but we don’t know what right LOOKS like. We don’t know how to get there.

I think many of us hope the blog is a way to get there. To create a world defined by us, by our own thoughts and needs. To see if others get it; get us. To search for and to finally be able to experience the feel of that familiar click into place that we’re just not experiencing in our daily lives, regardless of whether or not all the parts of that life appear to be fitting just fine.

I think this is why bloggers have these love-hate struggles with their blogs. Their blogs, no matter how overt or cleverly disguised, are their want, their yearning made incarnate. The blog is the part of them most needing to be nursed and loved and acknowledged and adored and unconditionally accepted. The stuff they just cain’t get at home, even though they feel (or are told) they “should” be able to.

And so they keep writing and writing…and does it ever click? Do they ever get to clearly define their want, and then have it met? To eradicate their loneliness and need? Does the blog help them get to there, wherever there is? I don’t know. It may just be another temporary panacea.

You know how it goes. The drugs are so good the first time. And so you keep at it, doing it more, pushing your limits. And then eventually, the drugs just don’t work. You can never get back that first high.

Or can you?

I think this is what makes it so hard for people to give up on their blogs. The blog is the last great battlefield of desire and longing. It’s an altered reality, where there’s hope that if you fight the good fight, say the right things, reach and gather the right people, all things can eventually look bright and beautiful, the way you feel them, in the deepest parts of your being, where you’re waiting for them to come true.

Is this unrealistic? Probably.

But man, doesn’t everyone burn bright like stars while they try?

And for this reason, I don’t want them to stop. And I don’t want to stop.

In the true pagan sense of things, it’s the trying that is heroic. No one can predict the outcome of the battle, so whether you win is irrelevant. It’s how bravely, creatively, and honorably you fought, all the way through, until the end.

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So, I know it's the age-old question, but... Why do we blog? Why do we read blogs? What's the gain? Why bother?

(photo credit: MacBook by Ricky Romero)