GREAT EXPECTATIONS

"Your blog is great, you should really do something with it". 

It was a well meaning directive of a friend that managed to achieve exactly the opposite of its intent.  I thought the blog was doing something?  Still, it made me think; what am I doing this blog for?  What is it's purpose?  Who is the audience?  Where is this supposed to take me?  What was it supposed to do?

It is the kind of reckoning that I have never been comfortable with.  I seem to be much better at things before anyone has any expectations about whatever it is I am endeavouring to do (including myself).  My first love, photography, began as a completely self-motivated exercise.  Since I went to a brainy math and science school my little hobby was of no consequence, which was just how I wanted it.  Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
 
The more involved I became, however, with the career of photography, with the industry, with the million other visions competing for the same few eyes, the more I retreated.  I am aware of how petty and immature I sound to say it, but the more people ask me to show them something the less I want to do anything worth seeing.

I am feeling a bit like that about blogging.  What started as a vague need to update people en masse about the endless goings on of the babies evolved into a mouthpiece for me. At the time I was experiencing a tragically unique situation and I was trapped in my house, so my need to feel connected was pretty desperate.  But I am not at all comfortable with sharing so much "me" so much of the time.   My posts started to feel a bit self aggrandizing. And while I was most happy to share the pain of my situation with other people out there who had experienced something similar, to everyone else I felt a bit like I was in the car crash on the highway being soaked up by the slowly passing eyes in other vehicles.

It is odd to ask this, it is ridiculous in fact, to ask for a bit of privacy on a blog that anyone can see. But ultimately I think it is good for my head and my heart to keep this process going, to fight the urge to swallow it whole when it begins to crumble. So I suppose what I am saying is that I would be most grateful to a silent audience, that I as I am struggling to figure out what private part of my voice I am able to share I have the privilege of no expectations.

Unless, of course, you have a book deal to offer me, then I will probably consider anything.