I’d like a scoop of vanilla with my existential musings

In one of those hive-mind collective blog-unconscious gestalt events, several bloggers I know, love and read have been pondering their place in the blogging-verse. Why did we start writing? Are we still writing for those reasons now? What if we want to change focus, or write nothing at all for a while? Will there be packs of angry readers buring laptops on our lawn?

I’m going to try not to preach or get too long-winded, but I’ve been pondering some of the same stuff lately. This blog started out as a WAR blog but has broadened out into general musings which are much more suited to my personal style. I’m an eclectic, Jill-of-all-thoughts kind of person in any case; I know a little (or more) about a lot of things, but I’m not a bleeding-edge expert on much of anything, and I’m happy with that. It’s how I roll, and it’s how this blog rolls — I knew that from the start, which is why the blog has the subtitle it has (“MMO musings and commentary,” for you RSS folk). Apparently it’s entertaining to a reasonable slice of you kind, smart, and extremely stylish people out there — but to be blunt, I’d be writing the same thing even if I only had 5 readers, or none at all. I’ve journaled for years, and this blog is just a more public exercise thereof; it took some getting used to actually being *read,* and that does change things a little (you don’t get to see the real basement of my brain!), but it’s not that different in essence. I ramble on about the stuff that interests me and, not too surprisingly given our common gaming background, that stuff seems to interest a fair few other people too. It’s a diffuse, filament-y kind of discussion we have on each other’s blogs and Twitter and wherever, but it’s fun and it’s often thought-provoking. I like to have my thoughts provoked.

But when work hits hard, as it has lately, I do wonder if people are starting to froth and frown and mutter “That bint hasn’t written a thing in days — that’s it, she’s OFF my list!” And then I hit myself with a clue-by-four and remember that I don’t (and shouldn’t) really care. Popularity contests bored me in high school and they bore me now, even if they sometimes pinch a little, and I have enough need for external validation without adding this blog to the list! I love pondering stuff with the blog- and gaming-posse, but as in MMOs, RL takes precedence over blogging and that’s the bottom line. Sure, if you ask readers to complain about your content (as Tobold has — rather masochistically — done in the past), then they’ll probably do just that. But if I want to fill out magazine tests on my blog, as I’ve been previously accused of doing, that’s what I’ll do; and it’s what Tobold did in the end, more power to him.

I certainly won’t bore you with the details of my ethical and moral system, but a couple of my most basic principles are: “Do what thou wilt” (despite some of its more dramatic proponents such as Mr Crowley) and — loose translation from the 1789 French revolutionary declaration of human rights — “My freedom ends where that of others begins.” It’s my blog. I’ll write as much as I can, as often as I can, but when I can’t or won’t, I know damn well you lot will have plenty of other stuff to read and ponder and write about for yourselves. 

And for the rest of you, my blogging buddies who are going through some form of “argh!” regarding your blogs, whatever that “argh!” may relate to — be well. We’ll still be here when you come back, and we’ll sure as hell be expecting some damn good walls of text about what you’ve been up to!

Peace and love, folks.

(Props and all relevant (c) stuff to ~kerryhall at DeviantArt for the very cool anarchy/peace/equality banner I used above.)