Blogging

I'm facing somewhat of a blogging identity crisis.

It started with one of my favorite professors noticing the my latest posts. I immediately thought, "Oh boy.  Is he secretly grading my blog?"  I'll admit, and I hope it's obvious, my writing in an essay is very different than in a blog post.  But still, I want to feel like the same writer, and I want to be regarded as the same writer.

But can I do that via blogging?  Even now I'm choking on the word blog.

Am I the only one here who feels a little weird admitting I have a blog, and can I say so without being seen as that blogger?  The fact that I live in Utah and wear cap sleeves makes me hesitant to say I have a blog because in those two elements I'm already stacked into a pile.  My blog has just been put into a certain realm.

I've always been okay to belong with the grammar nerds and liberals and student government members and honor society members at the same time that I've belonged with church goers and athletes and dancers (who for some reason get a bad wrap in higher education as being the dumb ones).

So why, now, am I concerned with my identity--in a world as intangible as an idea, no less?

Maybe it's because my writer's voice--that vulnerable thing--is under scrutiny by an entirely new audience.

Maybe it's because now that I'm out of school, no one encourages me to write or apply for a certain position or get involved in an organization.  The place where I've always found a nook told me I was done--congratulations!--and now I have to find another nook; a nook in the blog world, perhaps.

And I've enjoyed blogging, certainly.  But I don't enjoy the stigma, and I don't want it to attach to me like a leech, sucking away the variety my life has had, pushing me to be that blogger with the recipes and the crafts and the outfits.

But at the same time, I want to feel free to post about recipes and crafts and outfits and whatever else floats my boat, and I want it to be independent of the [Utah/Mormon] blogger stereotype.  I realize, however, that I cannot control the cyberspace impression, so I must wonder and write and put it out there and let other people perceive it as they will.

I need to decide if I'm okay with that.