Tuesday 12 December 2006

Why Blogging?




Blogging has been a trend in Vietnam for the last several years. There is a variety of reasons why one blogs. Some write blog for fun, or to put it another way, for entertainment. Some view their blog as a mean to make more friends, or more exactly and in a more literary way, to convey their feelings and attitudes toward life. Others go further to consider blog as a new mean of communication or a new genre of journalism. Some get into this cyber world for no particular reason, perhaps merely because they feel the need to follow a trend.


What about you? What do you write blog for?


And me, I started writing blog when I suddenly realised that I had not written anything for ages. I told myself that I should choose blogging as one way to develop the habit of writing and should not take it seriously as “chasing a stupid trend”. So I began to “play” with my blog until my dearest friend told me in a gossip: “You know, my male ex-classmate has launched a blog, too. An idiot as he is, hahaha, he has nothing to put in his blog except a few salutes and idle talks. Empty-headed. Hahaha…” We burst out laughing. Then I decided to update my blog regularly and keep it in a always-present style so that readers shall not think of me the way we think of my friend’s ex-classmate. ImageThis later turned out not to be easy at all because it required me to think of what to write everyday, and in so doing it makes blogwriting sometimes no longer a sort of entertainment to me. But I like to use the blog in such a way to refresh my sluggish mind.  


And why blogging in English?


It’s not because I am a “Western Vietnamese” or I love English. The truth is that, of all languages of the world, I will love Vietnamese best as I always do. As I was born a Vietnamese no languages other than Vietnamese can express my feelings, my beliefs, and after all, my true self. And that’s the very reason why I don’t blog in Vietnamese. I don’t want anybody to read the real me behind the words. Also for this reason I would prefer writing on subjects far away from realities – you must have noticed that most of my blog entries are about music, painting, and sometimes economics and politics. Forgive my poor knowledge of these subjects. (In fact I must confess right now that am not strong in any particular field.) But if I choose to write on subjects closer to life, or closer to my real thinking, I would inevitably let my self go through it, wouldn’t I?


Yet I am convinced that even when I write blog in English, a part of my self is obviously revealed. Anyway, that I try to practise my English writing skill, making the most of the vocabulary and idioms and expressions I’ve known, has obscured the part of self revealed.