Identify

I will have to start anew. I keep trying to dig through old entries from my tireless journals, but the material there is old, and that is never what blog readers want to hear about. I’ll keep the writing pretty simple to keep on par with most of what is born digital. But, I have to establish some presence on the Internet, even if at this point it’s by pseudonym alone. Leave your comment, tell us what you think, what is your little piece of the world? My favorite thing about the digital age is the trend of the facebook page, so in vogue that many argue without it you hardly appear at all.

But what will I blog about? What might be called a memoirist wave in readership in the States, blogging and the great number of memoirs published in the last several years are signs that we crave an outlet for personal experience. One could argue, though, that it is simply a variant of fiction. Many of the most famous works have recounted an individual’s view on the world – could we not allege that Dickens, Alger, or even Orwell, did not write embellished memoirs? Today we must recount stories of our experience for fear of personality obsolescence. How can we see you if you’re not part of the cloud? As fiction was—and still is—an outlet to quench the thirst of the individual to see the collective, memoir is allowing individuals to be part of it. Sort of. Are we more fragmented because of all the time spent online, or are we more connected than ever?

Certainly, we have long lived by stories. As a quiet and introverted type, I sometimes wonder what people talk about all the time – I am sometimes mystified – but I suppose that’s it. I will try to do my share, and hopefully by finding a voice in ones and zeros I can find a stronger one in the real world. I can do my share, and post anecdotes about my day, a bit of trivia about archives and libraries, post a photo or two, and tell stories once in a while. Most of all, I can write about experiences and the people that grace my diurnal jaunt through the crowd.