January 28, 2017
Happy Chinese New Year!
Isn’t it kind of weird how people write diaries? Theres a general idea of why one might want to write a diary. Some things just need to be logged down to be recalled more effectively. Perhaps, your vacation events were really nice, so you logged them in detail in your diary such that you could refer back to them when in duress (if you’re bleeding in a Google cubicle?) (have I developed a meta?). I took a trip to 日本 Japan over the break and thats exactly what I did. I logged all the details I could recall about the food, the costs, the people, the sights… everything - so if I’m feeling bad about New York being a certain way, I could think about how Japan compares and feel my heart sink a bit further.
Well, here is a great article from The Guardian on “why diaries”. Why “why diaries”? In many ways, a blog that gets no attention (like this one) is like a diary.
Two lines that stick out at the end of the paragraph that starts, “Who are diaries for?“:
Some people self-consciously keep diaries which they hope will be discovered as literary gems by their grandchildren. Jonathan Hall has no time for such people: 'Keeping a diary should not be a form of vanity publishing.'
In the case that people do read my crud, I don’t have high expectations people give me exuberant exclamations of excelent scholarship. It’s not like I write all too much about my life here in the first place. I haven’t written much here in the first place. More on that later. Jonathan Hall seems to be complaining here about narcs that wish for some glorification of their life — attention? I don’t even know if I want attention… attention levies responsibility. I just feel like “tech + life blog” is a stage of my life which I have to reach, a personal achievement I have to make if I seriously consider studying Computer Science. However, this “tech + life blog” is in a weird place between “no content”, “some content”, and no attention. (I feel like many Jekyll blogs are in this pickle). Would Jonathan Hall have any time for me if my diary-blog-chimera is going through puberty?
Johnny please?