Wednesday 18 June 2008

somewhat of a blog...


Dear friends,

I’m going to be writing a blog. This is it, actually. My blog, I mean, not it in some sort of larger sense. You know, not like, “This is it” or “Well, there you have it” or “I’ll take it! And a side order of fries!” This isn’t any of that. This is just my blog.

This past year I tried to do a video log, or vlog. Originally I had planned on doing my vlog somewhat regularly. That didn’t happen. Instead I would put off doing it for a long time, then have a temporary spurt of inspiration where I would do several vlogs in a few days at the expense of my academic work and personal health, only to slip back into a long period of vlog inactivity, one of the saddest types of inactivity in my opinion. One reason for this inactivity was my own doubting of my vlogging ability. I had set some lofty goals; I believe in the first entry I mentioned using the vlog to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. That was hard to live up to and it didn’t happen. Not in the way I thought it would, anyway. And then I felt a pressure to be funny with the vlogs, which led to me wanting to rebel against having to be funny by attempting to be earnest (not that those two things are opposite or mutually exclusive), which in turn led to me looking back on those attempts of earnestness (which usually took the form of a voiceover) and cringing. Not that being earnest should necessarily induce cringing, I just think that I overcompensated a bit and perhaps tried a little too hard; at one point in a video about spending the day in London I said something about “just wanting to look for moments of authenticity that I could relate to” - what the heck does that even mean?

Still, I learned a lot from doing it. In fact, seeing as how I’m still working on it, I’m still learning. I’ve got a few more ideas for vlog entries I want to make. You can see the whole thing here:

http://myspace.com/nateonjesuslane/

All of this is to say that even though it (again, not it in any larger sense, just my vlog) didn’t exactly turn out how I had originally imagined, and even though there are a few entries that I would probably be embarrassed to watch with other people in the room, in the end I’m glad that I did it. So, I’m going to do it (some sort of blog) again.

At this point I’m not sure what form this blog will take. I’m sort of an egotistical bozo, so I imagine I’ll make a lot of self-referential entries about new comedy videos that I put up online (a selfish blog, or a slog). And recently I’ve been writing news based commentary for Strong Takes (http://strongtakes.com/) under the alias Mello Costelvis. I’ve been getting a kick out of it, so I might do some entries on current events (news bloggin’, or noggin). I might offer some personal reflections (personal blog, or pog) and I might talk about my favorite hobby (Pogs). I also might get busy with work and life outside of the blogosphere and never write another entry. We’ll just have to see.

So. Welcome to my blog/slog/noggin/pog.

In short: this is it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the blogosphere!

Suzanne Yada said...

slog. i think you just coined a term that's going to tear up the internets.

Anonymous said...

Oh man i really hope you continue with your blog/slog/pog...this thing. I like it because it sounds like how you would actually talk you know? Some people write differently than they talk and i just think in my mind "You wouldnt ever say that in real life! Knock it off!" But i like the way you talk/write because its funny (not in the haha you are retarded funny or the you talk like a retard funny, the genuine makes-you-think about-things funny.)

Jeff Seymour said...

I think you should write a pflog.

...I'm not sure what that is, but I like the sound of it. Welcome to Blogger, and I'm hurt that your baby blog has more comments than my going-on-6-months one. Hope to see you soon.