Strangers in the night.

The entire concept of blogs - the act of blogging itself, and reading others' blogs, in my opinion, is evil. To start with, it has totally destroyed my habit of writing in a diary. I started keeping a diary at the age of ten, and until I began blogging three years ago, I'd accummulated six diaries in nine years, all hand-written in ink, of the good the bad and the ugly. The other day I flipped through my seventh diary only to realise that my first entry was dated 8th April 2002 and only contains ten entries so far O_o

Despite the fact that my diary is a non-living thing without feelings and emotions, I actually felt a tinge of guilt when I thought about how I'd ditched the good old-fashioned way of hand-writing for an online blog, the supposed 'in' thing of recent years. The weirdest, most ironic thing was, I'd actually ditched my only-for-my-eyes diary for an anyone-can-access blog, coupled with funky template, photos and links, etc.

Which meant that certain content had to be censored - names had to be substituted with nicknames, I couldn't bitch about anyone and most importantly I found myself not being able to write how I truly felt most of the time because I'm so conscious about how everyone (close friends, not-so-close friends, acquaintances, even random strangers) is actually going to read my writing. Also realised that I occasionally felt that obligation to write because some people check in everyday and I feel like I have a responsibility to keep up with writing, as odd as this sounds.

Then there is the fact that with a blog, your life's happenings are presented to the rest of the world, regardless of whether they know you or not. I mean, take today for example I met an acquaintance on the tram and at the back of my head I was piecing stories of her life here in Melbourne based entirely from reading her blog. And the worst thing was, she had no idea I read it. Well, not that I was intentionally being sneaky, it's just that HJ keeps giving me the address to read (pushing the blame to others ;p)

As much as I think that blogs are an evil concept and they make you feel so much lesser than the person you really are, deep down inside I know I cannot live without them. Blogging is convenient - you can hit the 'backspace' key everytime you wish to delete a wrong word, it is obviously quicker than hand-writing, and it keeps you in touch with your friends (which is especially significant to me who lives away from home). Not to mention that reading others' blogs gives you the lowdown on their lives, in this day and age when people are simply too busy to meet face to face or even have an online conversation O_o Of course there is also the existence of blogs to feed the voyeuristic desires of people like myself. I embarrassedly admit that when I am bored with nothing to do, I click on random links on my friends' blogs just to see what kind of person 'Sharon' or 'Benjamin' is. So there you go, knowing the entire life story of someone when you don't even know him or her personally...

I think I will be addicted to blogging, and blog-reading for a long time to come.

X X X

On another note altogether, Starbuck had his hair cut over the weekend and I must say that I don't really like it that much.

I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes...

Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter.