Straining to See

I feel mentally drained all of a sudden. And to think that I was just bloghopping for a bit.

I wish I could say that I feel tired because I encountered plenty of topical discussions, pseudo-philosophical discourses and just plain creative articles. The problem is, I didn't. I skimmed through three or four interesting-looking blogs in the last hour, and all of them turned out not to be as interesting as I had originally hoped.

That's not to say that they were bad, of course. Theoretically, if you subscribe to the belief that any piece of writing will inevitably have an audience that reads and respects it, then it's simply not possible to develop "bad" works, much less "bad" blogs. These weblogs most likely cater to particular audiences, which happen not to include me.

I would call them "shallow", I suppose, if I subscribed to a more opinionated point of view. But in reality, every bit of writing is insightful to some people and "shallow" to others. And everybody else has as much a right to their own perception as I do to mine. No two people, for that matter, will ever see a single piece of writing in exactly the same light.

You can look upon this article, for example, as the words of an enlightened genius, the ravings of a complete lunatic, the daydreams of a neurotic thinker, or the scribblings of an elitist observer. Whatever the case, you're forming your own opinion about things, and that's probably what's important to begin with.

It strikes me that we still don't have much of an idea as to what makes a "good" blog, much less a "bad" one. The Philippine Blog Awards weren't able to answer the question, last time I checked, and the local blogging community has yet to get organized long enough to point out the distinctions. Sure, each of us probably has an idea as to what they want to see in a blog, but those desires are probably far from universal to begin with.

In short, each of us sees different things. Each of us looks for different things.

I look for a bit of personal insight in the things I read, as opposed to mere narratives for the purpose of summary or entertainment. Everything that doesn't fit the bill, therefore, seems "shallow" and unfulfilling to me.

I could just as easily be sitting on the other side of the fence, though, enjoying idle tales of personal experience that have little or no relevance whatsoever, simply because it's fun. It wouldn't have to be fulfilling as long as the story, the experience, the life is there. Sometimes it's just good not to take things too seriously.

But then I'm the sort of person who does, and thus I already have a particular fence position staked out. The grass looks neither more nor less greener from where I sit, and I'm probably one of those people who can look at the stuff and realize that it's just grass.

Just grass.

Grass, grass, grass, wherever you go.

There are blogs everywhere as well. And most of them aren't trying to be professional or clear-cut or formal or insightful or whatever. They're just blogs.

People just write, and people just read. There's really not much else in it.

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And now you know just what caused the mental strain I'm feeling right now.

Ouch.