Well well well. We meet again. Sort of. In an online, cyber kind of way, and not really in a real life kind of way. However, while some may like to claim a gaping difference between reality and the cyberworld, some things do carry through from one to the other. There can be some big disconnects, but building on the premise that I'm not some crazy psycho 40 year old man claiming to be a 20 year old female, there are aspects of my real life that come through on the Internet side of things.
Of course sometimes the way I talk in real life doesn't come out the blog.
And sometimes the thoughts that show up on this blog never make their debut in real life.
There is a disconnect. But there is also a connection to who I am here and who I am there and the coexistence of those two things is somewhat intriguing to me.
Someone I was talking to yesterday told me that they liked the way I talk in my blog and they wanted to sometimes have conversations with me in the manner I speak on the blog. It was encouraging and confusing and inspiring of introspective thought all at once.
I realized that there are a few reasons why the way I write posts and the way I speak may be different.
1) I'm not checking to see if someone "gets" what I'm saying when I write. I just write and hope they understand. In real life conversations, I find myself looking at my listener and trying to feel out whether they A) understand what I'm saying and B) agree with it or not. When I'm blogging, I'm not doing either of those things. I'm trying to write out exactly what I mean (and I have the time to make sure I'm wording it the best way I know how - see next reason), and I'm trying to say it as truthfully and from the heart as I can, regardless of how my reader may feel about a certain topic. I'm not focused in the same way on how my readers may percieve what I'm saying- mostly because that's pretty near impossible- and I'm just speaking my mind and heart on things. Even in real life I try to speak truth when I'm talking about something I strongly believe even when people might disagree, but there's an undeniable fact that we as humans, will sometimes alter what we're saying to fit the audience to which we're saying it. Heck, even on here I do it. But I think my audience has less effect on what I say when I'm writing alone, than when I'm saying it directly to a person. I'm just being real.
2) With writing, I don't have to form a sentence in the amount of time I would normally speak a sentence. It would probably be a little weird if it took me as long to try to form an exceptionally worded spoken sentence as a written one. Here, let me try to show you what I mean.
Of course sometimes the way I talk in real life doesn't come out the blog.
And sometimes the thoughts that show up on this blog never make their debut in real life.
There is a disconnect. But there is also a connection to who I am here and who I am there and the coexistence of those two things is somewhat intriguing to me.
Someone I was talking to yesterday told me that they liked the way I talk in my blog and they wanted to sometimes have conversations with me in the manner I speak on the blog. It was encouraging and confusing and inspiring of introspective thought all at once.
I realized that there are a few reasons why the way I write posts and the way I speak may be different.
1) I'm not checking to see if someone "gets" what I'm saying when I write. I just write and hope they understand. In real life conversations, I find myself looking at my listener and trying to feel out whether they A) understand what I'm saying and B) agree with it or not. When I'm blogging, I'm not doing either of those things. I'm trying to write out exactly what I mean (and I have the time to make sure I'm wording it the best way I know how - see next reason), and I'm trying to say it as truthfully and from the heart as I can, regardless of how my reader may feel about a certain topic. I'm not focused in the same way on how my readers may percieve what I'm saying- mostly because that's pretty near impossible- and I'm just speaking my mind and heart on things. Even in real life I try to speak truth when I'm talking about something I strongly believe even when people might disagree, but there's an undeniable fact that we as humans, will sometimes alter what we're saying to fit the audience to which we're saying it. Heck, even on here I do it. But I think my audience has less effect on what I say when I'm writing alone, than when I'm saying it directly to a person. I'm just being real.
2) With writing, I don't have to form a sentence in the amount of time I would normally speak a sentence. It would probably be a little weird if it took me as long to try to form an exceptionally worded spoken sentence as a written one. Here, let me try to show you what I mean.
If I spoke the way I wrote, I wouldn't have time to go back and choose the exact and perfect word I wanted to use right there. I don't have time to go look up consult thesaurus.com for a more artful way of saying something when I'm having a conversation. Taking the I don't have time to rearrange words in the middle of a conversation would be awkward.
It took me about 2 minutes in all to write and edit the above paragraph to show up the way I wanted you to read it, and if in a conversation, it took me 2 minutes to think about and speak the above paragraph, I may not have very many people wanting to strike up conversations with me. People just don't usually take that long to talk. See what I mean?
In both real life and here, the things I say have a certain raw quality different than that of the other. Both venues have different filters that naturally happen. I try to keep what I write here as raw as I can (because over-processed just isn't cool these days :p ) but I can't help but to do a little editing- something I can't do in real life.
In real life too, I try to keep it as genuine as I can, but I have to think before I say things - a luxury that writing on a blog allows for.
They both have their pros and cons and all I've done in this post is point out some differences and shared my thoughts on them. I value the art in the tact and care that can go into blogging and I value the sometimes messy and genuineness in the art of real life talking. I try not to write just for that though, just for pointing out something rather obvious. I want you and myself to benefit from what I write. So, with this post I will tell you that I want to integrate the two more. Not that I think there's a huge difference between my real life "speak" and my blog "write". But I want to take the best qualities from both and carry them around with me all the time. If it means thinking of more tactful ways to say things, I want to take the time for that. If it means stopping myself from editing too much, I want to do that. I've never thought a whole lot about fixing up the way I talk or write but there's an importance to it that goes deeper than vocabulary or grammar. It's the ability to communicate and share ideas and feelings and truth with people and that matters.