A New Kind of Journal

Someone just asked me how blogging compares to journaling, and I got really smarty-pantsy about it for a while before thinking, This would be a good question for a blog. So let me put it to you, my few and far between readers: In what ways is blogging like journaling, and in what ways is it not? What would you be sacrificing by journaling online rather than privately, and what are the positive side-effects of such a practice?

Spam I Am

Today, due to circumstances beyond my control, my outbound e-mail has been tagged as "spam" by one or more major e-mail providers. Consequently, until I can prove that I'm not a spam generator, many of my e-mails are being blocked.

I can't tell who thinks I'm spam and who doesn't until I get a bounceback e-mail, but it is a rather humbling experience--an indictment on my communication habits. My approach to e-mail historically has been to (a) have a thought, (b) commit that thought to digital data and (c) click on "send." My thought then becomes someone else's problem--until, of course, someone somewhere says "Enough!" and cuts me off. On days like these I realize that one person's epiphanies are very often another person's irritants.

Beyond the obvious benefits to necessary communication, e-mail as I've approached it--along with blogging, I think--is often equal parts an attempt to be known and a desire to be admired. As such, it can be pretty addictive. You want to be known by more and more people, and so you monitor the profile views on your profile, despairing when the count stays static and congratulating yourself when it reaches some new round number. You compare the comment count from one post to another and from your blog to another's, and thusly you measure your relative worth. Meanwhile, people with their own problems are surfing the Internet, minding their own business and either allow themselves to get drawn into your search for significance or throw their guard up and say, "Please don't bother me!"

Anyway, my experience as spam has left me plenty circumspect, so I will simply say: thanks for coming by my blog. I hope you have fun here more often than you get annoyed. And if my presumed profundities ever bug you, please don't flag me as inappropriate. Instead, please post a comment to let me know; you get the annoyance off your chest, and my fragile sense of self-worth gets bolstered by another comment. Everybody wins.

The Great Art of Blogging

This morning I ran across this little ditty from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the great minds of the twentieth century, who spent the last years of his life in prison for his opposition to the Nazi German government during World War II:

We must keep on trying to find our way
through the petty thoughts that irritate us,
to the great thoughts that strengthen us."

This, my friends, is why I blog, whether I realize it or not. I think it's fair to say that I, jaded GenXer that I am, have mastered the art of petty thoughts. But the great art of blogging is, to paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, to air out my self-righteous self-satisfaction and see more clearly the great art of the world around me. I'm reminded of a passage from the biblical book of Lamentations, which is fancy talk for "a profound sense of irritation":

I remember my affliction and my wandering,

the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them,

and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind

and therefore I have hope:

Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning.

So, what's irritating you today? What's keeping you going?

Who You Callin' Strangely Dim?

Still sorting through my Urbana experience, still typing incomplete sentences. While you wait for me to be pithy and profound, check out Strangely Dim, where my friend Lisa Rieck has joined me as a blogger for InterVarsity Press. She's pithy, she's profound, and she can form complete thoughts much quicker than I. Can.