Lifting the Veil of the Inner Blogologue.

"This will make for a great blog post."
"I am so blogging this."
"Well, at least I got a good blog out of it."

I cringe when I hear these statements. Such hyper-self-awareness makes me uncomfortable. Why? Aaah, because we hate in others that which we loathe in ourselves.

Frequently, more so than I would like to admit, I find myself composing blog posts in my head about an event which I am still in the middle of experiencing. Think of me like Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell, in "Stranger than Fiction," only my narrator has more of a Southern accent and less of a charming British one. And let me tell you, it is distracting.

A veil of creativity drops before our eyes. We begin to see our
experiences through the thin veil of our blog. We recognize perfect "sound bites." We spot ideal illustrative pictures. We start composing. And if we aren't mindful, we slightly disengage, lost in our own heads.

Perhaps more to the point, then, think of me as Zach Braff's character, Dr. John "J.D." Dorian, on NBC's "Scrubs." While narrating his life in his head, he sometimes gets this faraway look on his face, absorbed in his own self-analysis, and misses what is happening right in front of him. Much to the annoyance of the people around him, I should add. Ahem.

This past Easter was the first with my blog. Toward the end of our family Easter activities, my two year old son began dismembering his very first jumbo chocolate bunny, an occasion worth capturing in photographs for our family album, to be sure. However, as I was snapping away, my husband said to me, under his breath, "You are taking that picture for your blog, aren't you?" I looked up, grateful to see that he was smirking, but felt the warm rush of a blush coming to my face. I was taking this particular picture, a closeup of the gnawed bunny ear, for my blog. Busted.

The first time of many in which I would be busted during an inner blogologue, that being a blog-centric inner monologue.

We all do it. And we can see when others are doing it, too, if we are fortunate enough to be IRL friends with other bloggers, or conventional writers, for that matter. Sometimes they will confirm it outright, other times you can see it in their eyes. They are composing. If we are competitive, we start counter-composing, trying to find the other angle, the more clever turn. If we are credible, we don't start directing.

On the heels of the BlogHer conference, you can almost see it happening in the pictures. You can see the blogging wheels turning. Look at enough Flickr albums and you will begin to recognize the blog-posts-in-progress, as they were at the time. Some bloggers might as well have written the imagined future post titles on their foreheads for future reference.

Is there something disingenuous about this behavior? Does it lend a sense of insincerity to the eventual post when it's not written on the fly at your keyboard? Maybe that is why I blushed when my husband caught me taking pictures for my blog and not solely for our family album. Perhaps on some level, I want my audience to believe that I never consider my blog other than during the moments when I am actually writing. My life and my blog as two separate streams, meeting only during the time that I am writing. But should "writing" be limited to the minutes during which my fingers are tapping keys?

Frequently, we come across blog posts about the internet connection of a fellow blogger having been down and that blogger having gone a little cabin-feverish with unwritten blog posts mounting in their heads as their usual outlet is unavailable. The blog infiltrates, the veil drops. And we compose.

All of the previous questions aside, I know the answer to the following question: Does my inner blogologue cause me to disengage, even a little, from the events I am currently experiencing? The answer is "yes." The veil of creativity lowers and I know I am not in the moment as much as I was only seconds before. Yet, I can't help it. Or I don't want to.

Consider your child's birthday party. You spend hours, if not days, planning every detail. You revel in the excitement and embrace the hopefulness of the anticipation. Then the day comes, the guests arrive, all of your plans begin to fall seemingly effortlessly into place as everyone is clearly enjoying themselves. It would be a shame to forget this day, so you pick up the camera, whether it be your still camera or your video camera, or goodness forbid-- both, and you start trying to capture these magical moments for your (probably largely unaware) toddler.

You pat yourself on the back for the beautiful shots you are catching. You can already see the pride on your spouse's face when you show them your clever angles and perfect moments. You are getting it all down, all the smiles, all the surprises, all of it. Well, all of it except for one small detail: you. Days later, you'll frown when you realize that you aren't in any of the pictures.

Just as the lowering of the blogging veil temporarily separates us from the events about which we plan to write, the lens of the camera can cut us off from that which we are so intent on capturing. Sometimes it is only after the fact that we realize our peripheral vision was more severely inhibited than we noticed at the time. We hear a funny anecdote about that birthday party and think, "Where was I? Oh yeah, I was taking pictures across the room."

The camera limits your vision to what can be seen directly in front of your lens. Your inner blogologue splits your engagement between the event as it is happening in your head and as it is happening in your real life. Can you not write your life and live it, too?

The opposite could be argued, however. You could say that knowing that you are going to write about something in your blog gives you a different perspective as you are experiencing it, allowing you to see it from different angles. Something that might normally push you over the edge loses some of its own edge because you can see the humor in the situation, as it will be written. Hell, you might even reenact some of it so that you can catch that picture that will send the post right over into hilarity. That is, if you don't just grab your camera as it is happening. All for the sake of the blog. And maybe a bit of your sanity. Yes, an argument I can understand.

More than ever, we are living in our own heads. The crazy thing is that by doing so, we are consequently engaging with others more than ever. What would have been a funny story between you and your spouse is now a funny story between you, your spouse, and your audience. Do we sacrifice an amount of our engagement for a later prolonged enjoyment of the event? Possibly, though not deliberately. Is that a negative thing? You tell me.

The next time the veil of your inner blogologue begins to lower, take notice. Do you stop it? Do you embrace it? Does anyone else notice? Are you embarrassed if they do? Does this, overall, enhance our experiences in the long run?

Just as I am grateful for our albums full of photographs, albeit mostly without me in them, I know I will be grateful for my blog years from now. Sacrifices of time and engagement be damned. Lower the veil again so that I may see and record and remember.

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Velveteen Mind