Once at school, our teacher asked us to write down exactly what went through our heads, without phrasing it neatly or taking anything away. It was meant as a demonstration of the flow-of-consciousness style, and in theory it should have worked beautifully. Except my mind went blank. Having been told to think of anything and write it down, I could think of absolutely nothing. So my jottings ended up consisting of "I must think of something I can't think of anything oh what shall I do". Not something a modernist author would leap at.
Blogging turns out to be a bit like that. You are enticed by the friendly instructions to create a blog, it's no big deal, really, why, you can use it as a "personal diary", can't you, it doesn't really matter if anyone reads it, and no, it's not in the least bit sad. Everyone's doing it. Besides, you have loads of opinions and thoughts which you have already shared with your long-suffering family about a hundred times, so why not get them off your chest and into cyberspace?
And then you get to your first blog entry, and suddenly the same self-consciousness creeps in as when I tried to write down my thoughts all those years ago. What now? Well, I've created the thing, haven't I? That's enough for one evening.
