I remember many years ago, somebody asked me, “Why do you write so much in your blog? Why do you put your life out there for everyone to read?”
I don’t remember what I answered that person, but it was probably along the lines of “because it’s fun?”
I started blogging way back when I was in school – before blogs were called blogs, before there was such a thing as WordPress… not trying to be hipster or anything, but I was blogging before I even knew what blogging was. They used to call it a website.. and we had things like guest books for people to sign… there were things called webrings… Back then, everyone had a blog/website. Everyone had something to say about their lives – before it all came crashing downhill and turned into advertorial central.
Anyway, that’s a story for another time. So today, I was thinking to myself about the question I was asked many years ago. I still don’t have an answer. I guess I just enjoy writing, and there are so many words that I can only keep in my head before it explodes. I have to put out all these thoughts before I forget them. Before they become irrelevant. Penning my thoughts makes them concrete, substantial, almost tangible – so they’re no longer just signals set off by chemical reactions in my neural network (is that even how the brain works?).
Then I thought about the question a bit more. Is my life really an open book?
Or do you, the reader, only know as much as I tell you?
You see, this blog, like any other piece of text you read has been written by me. And how honest/dishonest I’ve been can’t be determined by comprehending the text alone. What I’ve written could be all lies – or it could all be the opposite. You have no way to find out, unless I was writing about something which happened while you were there. But even then, we could have had different experiences doing the same thing. Or I could have been writing about something through the eyes of someone else.
This blog could be the strangest piece of fiction you’ve ever come across – after all, nobody would really think about things like sewing a shark onto your chest or not wanting a funeral. Right? Then again I’ve shown the whole world my business card. So it’s not like I don’t exist. Or am I some person somebody made up?
Maybe there is no George Wong. Maybe the guy you’ve seen or met in person is someone pretending to be George Wong. And he currently runs this blog.
Or this whole blog could just be the words of a brutally honest kid who doesn’t care about what people think about him and just says it as it is. He just likes writing about sharks for some reason.
Think of all your favorite bloggers or authors – do you think they’re really who they say they are?