this is the third or fourth attempt i’ve made at keeping a blog. i’ve got an alternate blog that i used for a class last semester, but this is the third or fourth iteration of a personal, ongoing blog. after i thought of the name shook notes, they’ve all been called that, but there’s been multiple starts under that name. these attempts have been thwarted in a couple different ways, primarily because it’s really hard to figure out the purpose of the blog.

the first attempt was doomed from the beginning, because i tried to address that question explicitly, and it dominated every post. every post was wondering, to one degree or another, what the effect of that post was, what it said about me. i’m very preoccupied with the idea that, when we create something like a blog (or a facebook/instagram/twitter/etc. account) we’re creating a really specific version of ourselves, whether we mean to or not. we’re choosing what to put out there, what to focus on, and what to leave out. it’s the curation of an identity, basically. it’s an interesting idea, and it makes an interesting blog post to consider it. it doesn’t, however, make a terribly compelling subject for repeated, extended blog posts. every single piece was variations on a single idea: “what kind of identity am i creating with this blog? how does the fact that i’m asking that question affect the identity being created?” these questions are interesting to ask once, but not over and over. the whole thing was just me slowly disappearing up my own ass. i deleted all of it.

the second attempt was more straightforward, and i determined to not make any posts that wondered about the persona i was projecting. i just wrote about things that occurred to me and interested me. i wrote about my so-called life. i wrote about our newest cat. i wrote about Gene Belcher. i was surprised to find, one day, that someone had posted a comment responding to one of my posts (about the white nationalist internet forum stormfront.org). the person asked me to reconsider my perspective, positing that white men are singularly blamed and persecuted by contemporary culture. i responded to their response, saying “hey, anything is possible.”

it was fine, i suppose, but while i wasn’t posting concerns about the persona the blog was creating for me, i was still obsessing over it. i mostly worried that the posts were too frivolous or that they were too transparently worried that they might come across as frivolous. i decided to erase all the posts, but instead of deleting them i edited them, crossing out every word of each one, so that they all looked like this. eventually, i just deleted everything.

then i started with this version. i decided i would do my best to not worry about what persona i’m creating with each post. i can’t control it, anyway. i’ma just do me. i started attaching pictures of dark, starry skies to some of the posts, for a reason. i made a handful of posts before again buckling under the weight of worrying about what kind of person i might appear to be to someone who reads my posts and stopped posting again. i didn’t delete the old posts this time, at least.

when i decided to return to school, i also decided i should go back to the blog. i need to just write, and the blog is sitting here, so i can use it for that. just to write anything that i think of. it doesn’t matter, because i’m just getting words out. it’s nothing, and occasionally it might be something. the point is just to do something, even though it’s terrifying and almost paralyzing to worry about the persona i’m performing, the character i’m assembling with each new post. simultaneously, i have all the control over who i am (because i’m the one deciding what i share, curating a really narrow gallery of me) and none at all (because i can’t control how anyone reading my carefully curated gallery understands anything i’ve shared). i don’t know how people do it. probably they don’t worry about it so much.

i shouldn’t worry about it so much. there’s only like four people who even know this blog exists, and i think only of them even reads it. still. what if they think i’m lame?