I couldn’t get this journal thing out of my head all day. Aside from startlement that within 24 hours after first posting I had 9 people who put me on their friends list, I was musing about what to write next. All day long I had big plans. I was going to wax philosophical about “quantum journaling” where the mere fact that I KNOW I have and audience changes the way I journal. Or maybe I was going to ponder the power of recognition as a motivator. I certainly felt its effects today when the comments and friend listing of others made me totally re-evaluate my commitment to this journal. I’d even thought about writing musings on life choices, how I’ve come to be where I am today (a stay-at-home Mom with four kids).
But here I am and I don’t know that I have enough mental energy left to give any of those topics proper treatment. Perhaps I’ll tackle them another day. This could be a long term problem with my journal. By the time I manage to herd all the children through dinner and family prayer and pajamas and teeth brushing and stories and into bed I’m ready to crash myself. It’s almost as much fun as herding cats. Oh and once they’re actually IN bed, then it is like one of those games where you hit gophers on the heads with mallets. Every time you get This One to go down That One pops up. There are nights where I think very longingly of actual mallets instead of metaphorical ones.
And here is the point where I feel the quantum journaling effect, because I feel compelled to assure everyone that I DO love my children and wouldn’t trade them for anything. No actual mallets are ever used in our household on anything other than inanimate objects. At least not by the parents. The stuffed hammer from Chuck-E-Cheese is a frequently misused and confiscated item around here.
And this entry is why LiveJournals exist. They don’t have to be heavy, philosophical musings or even well-composed bits of prose (though that does make reading the journal much easier). All the Journal has to do is be; whether it is a record of stream-of-thought without consciously chosen structure, or a simple record of one’s day, or even a space devoted to the rant-of-the-hour, the LiveJournal is just there.
Heck, all blogs are just ‘there’.
It’s the comments that they provoke which provide much of the appeal of something like this. You can go from a simple comment about half-shaven apples to just about anything within the space of three, maybe four replies. 😀
Correction:
It’s a stream-of-consciousness, even. Short of deletion, some things can persist for a surprisingly long time… or just go the way of all data.
The key, methinks, is to Not Contemplate What To Write – just write whatever comes to mind. Rant, vent, wax contemplative and philosophical if you want. Or just grumble about things.
It’s why it got called a LiveJournal, after all. 😉
Anyhow – yeah.
Just my two coppers, as it were.
Re: Correction:
Entirely true. I know of one comment thread going well over 100 comments strong… and others which have been eaten by the Bit Bucket.
That happens to me all the time: I have all sorts of things I want to write about while I’m at work, or walking to/from, or shopping at the store, or whatever. But once I’m at the keyboard on my own time: nope, I got nothin’ to say.
And I don’t even have kids to blame, er, credit it with. 🙂 But I must say that the metaphor about kids and the gopher game was worth an entry, all by itself. 🙂
I’ve noted the Heisenberg Principle of LiveJournal myself; the very fact that you’re being observed has an effect on what you say and how you say it. It’s probably more intense in your case because your audience — us — didn’t exactly evolve organically, but was semi-foisted upon you by exposure through Howard.
It’ll take some getting used to, but I’m sure you’ll find the right balance; we all do, somehow.
Heisenburg Principle. That’s the phrase I was looking for. I knew “quantum journal” wasn’t quite right, but couldn’t remember enough conceptual physics to put another name on it. Thanks!
My pleasure. My degrees are in physics and astrophysics, so it’s second nature to me.
Heisenberg?
I thought it was Schroedinger’s Cat. Assuming I got the spelling right.
Both.
Heisenberg and Schrodinger both dealt with the general principle.
There’s this great joke about Heisenberg (no, really).
A cop pulled over the great quantum physicist Heisenberg for speeding. Leaning over the car menacingly, he asked, “Do you know how fast you were going?”
“No,” said Heisenberg, “but I can tell you exactly where I was.”
I like that phrase, “quantum journaling”. It has some interesting implications.
For example, it implies that there is a minimum measurable unit beyond which a journal entry can not be divided. Presumably, since the smallest entries are memes and no meme can be divided while still being a coherent entry, then you can therefor assume the meme as the quantum unit of journaling and measure all journal entries in terms of their memes.
Which bring up the question: Is a meme a wave or a particle?