Tuesday, February 10, 2009

To Blog Or Not To Blog

Roger Ebert has a great blog. He waxes philosophical on a variety of topics, touching only incidentally on film, and his readers' comments are often as insightful as his words. Today's post discussed writing and the internet in general, mainly the idea that everything we write and say will most likely be forgotten in a few years if not sooner. He goes so far as to say that even the works of Shakespeare will eventually be lost to future generations.

This leads to the question of why anyone writes anything at all ever. Blogs offer a prime example, considering that many are uninteresting to all but their writers. In writing this blog I've had the same thought: Is this totally stupid? Is it at all worth reading? Does anyone care what I'm writing? Do I care what I'm writing? Well, I'd like to think that at least I care what I'm writing. If I find myself writing something that I'm starting to get bored with, I think, "If I can't make this interesting to myself, then why would anyone else care," and I just delete it and stop wasting my time (and yours).

Before all the bloggers (and other writers) decide that life is meaningless and go jump off the Blogtown Bridge, despair not. In closing Ebert gives us a little uplift, a reason to live, and to write another day:

""A person has to participate," Studs Terkel liked to say. That's how I feel. Meditating on futility--that's no way to live. One of the most useful pieces of advice ever given me, at a time when I despaired, was: Act as if. Act as if you make a difference. If infinity is too big for you, live in the day. Shakespeare as usual expressed this better than anyone else, and it took him six words: To be, or not to be. That wasn't simply an expression of the Existentialist choice between choosing to live or die. It was the choice to act, or not to act. To participate."

While it may not all be sweet flowing poetry, I'd like to think that my writing is at least improving slightly, and at least I'm participating!

1 comment:

mamacita said...

I was in a blogging funk, and depressed that I didn't have more comments, until I decided that I was really just writing to entertain myself. I think my blogging got better after that, plus it's way more fun.