the Wind and what it brings

I've just finished reading an incredible article from the New York Times Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25internet-t.html?pagewanted=1&hp

It's a tell-all from a serial (in fact professional) blogger, and it's worth reading through all ten pages.

My relationship with my blog (and everything else) has developed in the two years that its been alive. I've often wondered about its value for me, for others, for the canon of online self-flagellation. I have always preferred two-way conversations and I confess to checking for comments a lot. I don't know who reads this thing. Some of my friends, some of my family, some people I don't know. I have bounced back and forth between conservativism and full-blown narcissism but to this point have refrained from betraying anyone. Yet I have often wondered, should I sell the farm and really write all that's floating, ricocheting, through my head? The last post and its "vaguaries" makes me feel impotent and listless, and I hate this. But what's the alternative? Taking liberties I have no right to take? Or do I, indeed, have the right? This is the only life I've got, after all.

Let's just say I am at a cross-roads with my blog. I have to question my desire to tell you everything. (And there is much more to tell you than what you've read.) The terrain where I was raised suggests that I owe many things to many people, to God, to the planet. How do I balance that with making my own way through this world? How do i become "a man" in my online presence? How do I become a man in my real life presence?

I've spent most of the last year wandering the globe "like a half-dead zombie" (to quote my brother) trying to come to terms with some of the developments of my life. I had specific goals for the months I spent in Africa, and amazingly some of these have been realized. I find myself changing, moving. And I just need to quote quickly from the article I mentioned up top:

"But even though this sense of disconnection from my old self and my old life was confusing, it felt mostly good. After all, what was so great about my old self and my old life, anyway?"

It's taken out of context, sort of. Anyway, the sentiment is important. It's important for me to write it down and publish it online so that I can see it and mark it as a milestone. It may be indirectly important to you, if you know me and would like to understand me better. If you don't know me then it may or may not be important. You have to be the one to answer that.

The nights are cool in Paris and I'm sleeping like a baby, now that I'm no longer on the malaria meds. I'm going to bed now. Thanks, Emily Gould, for walking this bizarre path and for telling us what you've learned from it.
Friends, goodnight. Others, goodnight.