Metablogging

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve already written two posts this evening. Well, evening for me, maybe something else, depending on your time zone. Still, there has not been much time since my last updates.

This one is a little bit different from the others.

It started with looking at my blog, clicking around, checking my comments and hits and all that jazz, when I saw the list of blogs I read on the right-hand sidebar, and realized that I actually haven’t read many of those blogs lately. So, I clicked on the first one: my sister Beth's blog, and started the endless click-cycle. I read page after page, bopping around, actually reading a lot of it that I previously ignored.

I must confess, my recommendation of Beth's blog until now has been a bit of false advertising (sorry, Beth.) But I'll tell you the reason for this. It is because the very first blog post of hers that I read was essentially a bitch fit. I intended to include a link to said blog post, but after an hour of blind perusing of the blog, I am still unable to find it, as this blog (infuriatingly) has no search function, nor a concise post list. Anyway, the post was about how she had read The Road by Cormac McCarthy and didn't like it. She went on and on about how not liking a book that's well reviewed doesn't mean she doesn't get it or is uneducated or what have you, just that she doesn't like it and is entitled to her opinion. Cool.

That's all well and good for a rant about stereotypes and the inexplicable social ranking of creative works like books, but to be honest, as her sister, it read more like the "the whole world is against me because I'm different and the oldest or something" rants that I remember from our childhood. It's just a behaviour of hers that has come to represent all her character flaws to me. Beth whines about being victimized, just as Jackie (my younger sister) loses her patience instantaneously and rages. Sorry, Beth and Jackie. Honestly, I recognize that they actually do these things very seldom, but they're my sisters, so in some ways they'll always be that one memory I have of each of them screaming. Somehow, no matter how many great times we have together, as soon as they start bugging me, that screaming kid is who they turn into in my mind.

So when I read this phantom blog post for the first time, I involuntarily read it in her voice from one of those memories, and I thought to myself, "This is exactly the kind of conversation I go to great lengths to avoid having with my sister in person. Why on Earth would I take my own time to let her have this conversation AT me over the internet?"

But this post is not about flaming my sister or her blogging. In fact, it's quite the opposite. 

Since that fateful post, I've read one or two that I enjoyed, but largely ignored her writing in general. But thanks to my idle clicking and reading today, I've come to a two disturbing conclusions, and have made even more observations that have not yet led to conclusions.

My first conclusion: my sister is a much better writer than I thought. I actually really enjoyed the posts that I read. In some ways, it sounds just like her, to me, and in others it seems a little odd, but I guess that's because she's writing for an audience that is much broader than her little sister, and her voice is thus profoundly different at times.

My second conclusion: I think my sister's blog is better than mine (although notably NOT in the convenience of navigation, as I discovered searching for mystery blog 1). This is obviously hard for me to say as a little sister and self-identified narcissist. But it makes me think about why that might be, which is good, I think.

But Thirdly: I noticed that my blogs read an awful lot like my dad's travel updates. My dad sends out e-mails to a set list of people (mostly family) about what he's doing, how his travel goes, and basically the answer to the typical, "How was your day?" That he might receive if he was coming home from work. Sometimes it's intentional that my blogs should sound like this, because I'm really just trying to get everyone up to speed on what's happening in my life, since I talk to my friends and family from home so seldom. But I want to think that there's more to it than that. I mean... I want to have personal and critical and interesting commentaries on what's happening to me, as well as fun and amusing anecdotes, and just generally entertaining content. 

I don't really know what conclusion to draw from that one... I guess my blog is having a little existential crisis. Anyway... we'll see if things change, or if I just get over this little hiccup. Either way, I'll keep you posted. 

P.S. I'd like to add here that I actually get along much better with both of my sisters now than I ever did growing up. Bla bla bla platitudes and disclaimers. They're both great people.