torsdag, januar 24, 2008

Real life vs. blog

I've come across many in the blogosphere for whom a blog is the secret to a special compartment in their lives, unknown to their real life contacts. For me, it has always been the opposite - I encourage everyone close to me to read my blog, family, friends, whomever. And some of them actually do so. More importantly, many of them read it without me actually realizing it. This leads to some embarrassing situations, not because of anything I say about anyone, but just because I'm so generally crap at corresponding by more personal means (e-mail, phone, Skype, chat programs, etc.), that the only way for people to find out what's happening in my life is to read my blog. And people do clue in to this. Which leads to incidents like the following:

1) After my mom died, there were several people, childhood friends, ex-boyfriends and the like, who should have gotten messages from me about it. But I found it really strange to write about, and so didn't do it. In the month that followed, all of those people, without exception, wrote me really nice condolence e-mails, having figured out the situation from my post on the memorial service. I still cringe when I think of the sheer tackiness of it.

2) A few close friends who are far away in space and time have also written me nice e-mails congratulating me on my pregnancy. Which of course they read about on my blog. This includes a good friend to whom I did write with the news (long after I should have), who responded with a lovely Christmas card saying something along the lines of, 'Pregnant? I'm shocked! No actually, I'm not. I've been following your blog'. I would imagine that, at the rate I'm going, she'll read this before finding any follow-up e-mails in her in-box. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

At least these incidents are only one-way...me not communicating with others, who in turn are good at communicating with me (luckily, as otherwise, I might have no contacts at all). But now it seems to be getting totally out of hand, as shown by a comment on my last post from the ubiquitous and prolific 'Anonymous'. In it's entirety, the comment reads:

Dear readers of this blog.
It's sad but true - this is the only way, I can come in contact with my girlfriend....

Kimananda: Pick up your phone and call your boyfriend (you know... the one you live with, father of your unborn child etc.) ;-)


Which basically means that not only can other people only find out about my life through my blog, but I myself am now only finding out about others through my blog. You know, I think I'll go and find an old e-mail (I don't throw them out, I just keep putting off responding to them until they are forgotten) and answer it. Or maybe I'll just go and start a conversation with my boyfriend, Anonymous.

8 kommentarer:

x sagde ...

i know what you mean exactly. Sometimes i do the opposite.
i sometimes withhold information from people who never call me by not writing my blog for 5 days in a row. That makes them call. Clever eh?

Devil Mood sagde ...

haha what's your Mercury situation, Kim?
I laughed when I read the anonymous message today.
My blog is almost completely secret and that works fine with me. Nevertheless, sometimes I don't tell people things because they already read it in the blog (the 2 people that know about it lol).

Anonym sagde ...

Hahahahaa! I totally sympathize. I can't count the number of times I've gotten hurt phone calls from my parents who've just read some big news on my blog before actually hearing it from me. At least I called them before posting about getting engayged . . .

FourLegged sagde ...

You have a boyfriend named Anonymous?! Does your giant rock star know?

kimananda sagde ...

Chloe, that's pretty cool too. Which seems not to work for me. That's the result of not communicating for too long.

Ms. Mood, it's in Virgo, just like most of the rest of my chart. ;-) Seventh house, conjunct with Venus, Uranus, and Pluto, opposition ascendant. I thought 'oh, isn't my phone turned on?' when I saw the message! It wasn't, which is often the case (I switch it off when I'm in class, then forget to turn it back on).

Roro, I make a point of telling my close relatives really big news before it goes on blog. Otherwise, I've come to realize that, well, this seems to be the way I communicate. Still seems a bit sad, though.

Bro, the rock star Hello doesn't know about Anonymous, but it's not a problem. Anonymous and I, well, what we have is a blog thing, and Hello never reads my blog. So, I think it's o.k.

Devil Mood sagde ...

I forget about my mobile all the time...I couldn't care less about it. ;)
Ooh, a packed 7th house! I have Venus and Pluto there too, but next to Saturn :(

kimananda sagde ...

Yep, almost everything is in the 6th or the 7th house (with a couple of key exceptions in the 8th). Saturn is off by himself being the handle to the bucket.

Devil Mood sagde ...

Oh, I have a bucket too ...
I wonder what this chat sounds like for non-astrology types lol