Photo Journal 6

This is a picture of my screen when I sit down to write a blog post, and it is significant to me because I have spent a significant amount of time looking at it.  As any reader could surmise, I have had my difficulties in keeping up with my ambitious mission for this blog (the thoroughly thorough documentation of my time in Korea).  My program director tells me that almost none of the students that he has sent to Korea has kept up with the weekly blog; firstly, this means that I am in good company, and secondly that there is most likely something about blogging itself that leads to shirking and procrastination.  I have spent a lot of time musing about the act of blogging when I couldn't bring myself to actually write.

Blogging is a strange creature.  It exists along a fine line between private journal and public account.  In any writing, there are the constraints of time and space and language, and so you must necessarily choose only a few topics from the infinite supply of life experience.  In blogging, as in private journaling, you choose subjects that are significant to you in order to be genuine, but blogging differs in that you have to choose and address topics with a wide audience in mind, not just the self.  Thus the blog is not entirely candid, not entirely censored, but rather the best of the self, that which you want to share.

Of course, without feedback from readers, especially academic feedback, it is easy to lose the audience and write for and to oneself- that is, to fall too far to one side of the line.  On the other hand, getting too caught up in the anonymous general audience that is the internet puts you too far on the other side of the line, inciting anxiety and creating confusion about which voice to use or which subjects to address.  In my mind, this tenuous balance of walking the line creates a unique self-consciousness when writing a blog.

Essentially, a blog is a publication that represents you both in substance and in style.  It is writing that is both by you and about you.  At least for me, this means that I want to be in the right mindset and in the best state to produce my best work, and it is extremely challenging to find this mood with enough time and resources to sit down and blog in the midst of the busy, disorienting, and exciting setting of life on KAIST's campus.

Without practice, comfort with the medium of blogging, and dedication, it is easy for the assigned weekly post to give way to procrastination or anxiety.