Well, my blog seems to have stirred up a few people today. I guess I am OK with that. I started this blog to share my experiences and feelings as I went through what I thought would be an interesting experience, pursuing a college theatre degree as an “older” student. It has been everything I could have imagined and more, so I have been very inspired to write down how I feel about different experiences.
It is an odd feeling I must say, to show up at school and have people already know things I thought about the day before. I guess what it boils down to is this, I write this for my amusement and I am shocked how many people actually read it! I look at the numbers on my administration page and I see them the way I saw money at the bank, as only paper, ink and numbers. (In the bank you are trained to only think of money as something to work with and balance, not something you can use to actually buy stuff. It isn’t yours so you have to treat it as “monopoly money”, not actual cash.) So these numbers really didn’t equate to me as people, just more numbers.
I get the occasional comment from some of my friends at church. They were always wanting to know what it was like to go back to school so this was a way that I could not only write, which I love, but answer their curiosity en masse. So it is a diary for me and an update for a few friends. But writing something that hundreds of people are reading is a whole different ballgame.
I try not to name names. Of course, my descriptions make it where people know if I am talking about them but others probably won’t know who I am referring to. I think that is the only ethical thing to do. After all, I am not writing a tell all about Jennifer Anniston, just anecdotes about crazy college kids. So that is one rule I have for my blog that in a personal diary I would not have, I would be naming some names! I also stop and think if it would really injure someone if they read something about themselves from my perspective, so I have not written some funny things and some heartbreaking things in my blog.
Due to a computer glitch, I lost the first year of my blog into cyber space which is disappointing, one of the things I was hoping to do was go back and read my posts years later, the same way I read my journals occasionally. It is so amazing to see where you were and what you used to think and do! I was hoping when I complete this part of my journey and graduate, I could put this blog together as a printed record. But that can’t happen in it’s entirety due to the loss.
Blogging is a new frontier for me and others, a way to communicate, express yourself and vent. But it is also public so it must be governed by the laws of decorum to a point, so no one is hurt or humiliated. Now I can write anything I choose about myself, my feelings, my anger, my self doubt, my past (don’t get me riled up about that again!) but where other people’s feelings are involved I feel like I have to be respectful.
So keep on reading and tell your friends to read it. I do hear some funny things since I am often treated like a bug on the wall by the other students, and I will keep writing them down!
