Growing Up In Public
By Emma.
I’m now writing an average of two or three blogposts a week. The topics vary, the style changes, but several times a month, I am putting out ideas that I have into the public domain, trying to examine them through the writing process and trying to make the best arguments I can for the things I believe.
I also read several blogs a day by other writers, some with whom I frequently agree and some with whom I frequently disagree. Some elucidate a point further for me, some change my mind on a topic, some simply frustrate me.
My whole blogging “career”* is online for all to see. Over the time that I’ve been doing it, i think my style has changed somewhat.
My posts are generally a bit longer now, more discursive and I hope and believe more nuanced. While not wholly without some deserved or undeserved snark at other writers, I have stopped trying to be quite so lairy. The “worst blog post of the week” phase was a mistake, and not just because it was always won by someone on Lib Dem Voice (see, snark still intact).
My initial campaigning zeal (I started in the middle of the 2010 election campaign) has calmed to a midterm tempo. As has the Government’s mania for huge, all-encompassing, legislation. There is more room for talking tactics and strategy.
I have more distance from the last Labour Government and more of the work of the Tories to compare it to. I’m less wounded and angry about mistakes made then, and more interested in avoiding repeating them and where at all possible, avoiding making brand new ones.
I am both the same woman who wrote so angrily about New Labour and a woman who has grown past that anger. I was right to be angry, and events of the past few years have given that anger much vindication. But it is also right for me to write as I feel now, not as I felt then. I owe myself and whoever is reading this that honesty at least.
As I continue to write, to read, to experience and to be inspired, I have no doubt I will change my mind on some issues. Because what I write lives on in perpetuity on this site and others, sometimes those shifts in attitude, changes of mind and sometime – I am sure – downright hypocrisies will be exposed for all to see.
Does this mean I should stop writing in fear of exposure? I hope not. I hope that my journeys will be clear even if the start and destinations vary. I hope that my values remain constant even if my interpretation of them fails to.
Life, for many of us happens online these days. Just as you can see photos of me on Facebook as a teenager struggling towards adulthood, so too can you see my writing, my thinking and my ability to marry the two here develop.
Some may prefer my earlier work. Some may wonder what happened to the energy and dynamism of my first year. Some may just wish I went on a little less these days. But in the end, I write the best pieces I am capable of. I offer them to you. They are yours to like or loathe as you choose.
*career doesn’t seem quite right, but seems the least wrong term I can think of. Well good writer me, innit!
Tags: blogging
Wednesday, July 18th 2012 at 22:28
Your post really struck a chord with me, as someone who’s trying to find her political voice in the world of online political criticism.
I still remember the first time I commented on an article and how different the words looked once they were published on the page. Like some clumsy chunk of asphalt, smashing a cashew, the sentiments expressed were mine, but the tone and vitriol suddenly looked utterly alien.
Since then, I too have learned some rules – to never get personal, and quietly slip off when others do; and to address people politely at all times, even if I violently disagree with their views (I am not Rick in ‘The Young Ones’) – and that’s just in the space of a couple of months!!!
In term of political views, think life and history takes us all on a journey, but I always find it touching when I read back over old diaries and I hope you feel the same.
Wednesday, July 18th 2012 at 22:46
I completely agree and identify with everything you say (though am much less at walking away).
Thank you so much.