Doubt

I found myself in a conversation on Friday with a couple of new friends about privacy. We were talking about "the MySpace generation" and how there's all this concern about how they have a different attitude toward privacy than everyone older than they does.


I remarked that I use nicknames in my blog to protect my and other people's privacy. I heard myself say "my blog" several times, and I heard Zirpu say it too during the conversation. I thought to myself, "Erg, how ridiculous. Pretentious, silly, stupid. 'My blog', 'me me me'." As if I had anything important to say.


The thing is, I read a few blogs. Three I read because they're written by people I know, so I can keep up with them. Two I read because I like the way the authors write. One I read because I promised someone half a world away that I would. Mostly, they also write about issues like politics, food, travel, culture. Reading them has become a habit, like reading the newspaper (even though I mostly get my news from NPR). I imagine that someone who is reading my blog might be doing so for one or another of the reasons I listed, but sometimes it seems pretty pointless to have a public writing space - except that by virtue of its being public, I am actually participating in my resolutions, two years in a row.