Pushing the envelope

I’ve become a little scep­tical of the net in the past few weeks, and unsure about my place in it. Why? Because there have been times when I’ve been too close to writ­ing some very reveal­ing posts, only man­aging to stop, pull myself together and see sense at the last moment. But this has led me to fre­quently curse the day I decided to attach my full name to this web­site. Stu­pid, but the web seemed much smal­ler back then, and blog­ging seemed like an endear­ingly fra­gile struc­ture held together by noth­ing more than glue, bits of stick­ytape, and a hope that it wouldn’t just topple over.

So I’ve been enga­ging in those same old internal dia­logues that I’m well aware many other navel-gazing blog­gers have indulged in. Should I start afresh with a new web­site? Have a ‘secret’ web pres­ence on Blog­spot or Live­Journal, where I can purge without worry? Just decide not to write any­thing, any­where? Or throw cau­tion to the wind and post what I want to post, and hang the consequences?

Far too many ques­tions there. So instead of try­ing to answer any of them or come to a moment­ous decision, I chose to escape. And that escape was called email.

I’ve been email­ing people: new cor­res­pond­ents, as well as people I haven’t con­tac­ted in this way in ages. Long back and forth con­ver­sa­tions. Yes, I sup­pose we could have chat­ted to each other over IM, but I rather liked hav­ing the time to think about what I was say­ing, yet send those words instantly once I’d typed them. It took me back to a rather more naive time before I put my thoughts online. It was comforting.

There’s no great con­clu­sion to this entry, and cer­tainly no import­ant decision to announce. I just wanted to say that if a severe case of blog neg­lect should sud­denly take hold (prob­ably unlikely now that I’ve gone to the effort of fore­warn­ing you), then email is most likely to be the reason — although apathy will no doubt be close by in second place.