A Change of Style?


I wonder if Part 2 teaches ways to decompose in a casket.

I wonder if Part 2 teaches ways to decompose in a casket.

Random Observation/Comment #178: A lot of people ask me, “Where do you find time for these personal projects?”  I guess, I type fast?  I don’t know why my career isn’t as interesting as my hobbies, but I wish I can one day have the two intermingle.  Until then, they seem to be fighting for my attention like two cute girls (Hah!).  I organize myself well and allot a specific amount of time for those tasks I deem “important.”  I think the last time I evaluated my list of “shyt I like doing,” I don’t seem to have enough time to sleep, let alone leave my laptop.  I wonder if my world is slowly becoming more selflessly selfish or if I’m just blindly wasting my time (I don’t like the choices either).  I began to think about the quality of my life and the quality of my life I express through status updates, tweets, and blog entries – Am I really having fun?  Obviously, “Yes” or else I wouldn’t be doing this – Or would I?  Right now, it’s very confusing, but maybe I’ll come to some conclusion after sitting down and letting myself rant.

This Chinese idea of “face” is basically the image shown to a particular community.  It is my identity and a lot of things that define my life – thus facebook?  It might have a deeper meaning than what we’ve passed as a simple name, or perhaps, this idea just evolved to this out-of-control entity.  Although I haven’t accumulated a debt, a large sum of money in a bank account, or really anything materialistically important, I feel like this virtual identity has become my prized possession.  It’s almost precious enough for me to pay for it (Yeah, no way).  When I considered religion, I considered it for the community purposes rather than the silly mythical ones – Is this the community I am forming?  Am I becoming my own godly figure by gathering followers on Twitter?

Instead of limiting my facebook with all these private settings, I do the initial boundary to accepted friends and then basically express myself with status updates, posted notes, pictures, links, and a slew of other things.  Am I doing this for my own interest or am I driven by this hunger and obsession towards keeping someone informed?  Would I fall off the face of this Earth if I stopped telling someone I’m alive?  I hope not, but it does make me wake in a cold sweat… Oh, right – Kinkos.  I’m covered. Props for those who got that.

The reason blogging is even remotely accepted is its somewhat (or possible) helpful nature to those who read it. In most cases, a person subscribes to individuals that have similar interests to hopefully read articles and stories that make this complex Inter-webs a little bit more manageable.  This idea started with search engines, but very quickly grew into the world of StumbleUpon, digg, facebook linking, delicious, and dozens of other viral networks that share user input.

There is something intrinsically attractive about being a useful reporter in this world.  I think it closely links to this pathetic hope that someone will read your content and become inspired by your opinions.  I cannot single myself out from this crowd too much (although, I have mentioned numerous times that this is more for my parents and my own memories than reaching out to any particular group) because I do give a slight grin whenever I see higher counts in Facebook Like’s, wordpress blog visitor statistics, and even xanga stalker stats.  This may be the underlying reason I tweet and update my status so often – it’s a loose connection with an audience that probably doesn’t even have to exist.

I think it’s a taste of fame that each one of us had dreamed to experience, and the truth is: I’m addicted.  I don’t even know if anyone cares what I say, but just having a way to say it where it might be heard is enough.  In fact, if responses became rampant, I might be more careful with my words and lose this odd writing style I’ve developed.  I’m more-or-less comfortable with spewing whatever comes to mind – Chocolate-covered scorpions.  See? Flying monkeys throwing flaming feces.  How many mini-gummy bears does it take to kill a Haribo normal0sized gummy bear?  I can do this all day.

Now that I evaluate my writings, I’ve found that I’ve entered this blogging world with the wrong intentions.  I’m actually doing this for my own enjoyment and not trying to find a niche or audience.  There are no ads and I don’t even write about topics that people would particularly like to read.  My entries are long-winded and my separations of paragraphs are non-existent.  I’ve tried reading what I write over again – it’s absolutely torturous.  So then, why do I publish it?  I’m definitely expressing my opinions, but I break all of the rules in blogging 101.

1) I don’t stay on topic.

2) I don’t attach any links so this could be found by some crawling search engine.

3) I don’t keep things simple or easily understandable.

4) I just follow my stream of consciousness about random things without a definite topic.

5) I am writing about events that happened to me last month.

So, should I change my format?  Should I try to obtain more readers with these new techniques of spreading my opinion, like mini-blogging in Twitter?  Is my identity going to be spread through these viral networks through small comments and “diggs” or “likes” in my own news reporter way?  Should I promote my blog by visiting random people’s sites and commenting everywhere?  This paragraph is only filled with questions, but I have no definitive answers – Story of my life.

I haven’t decided to change the format, but this entry is definitely not a good start – another rant for the books.  It’s nice that twitter is incorporated with wordpress, so I’ll use this by keeping that as my recent updates and then continue sitting down and typing down (if that makes sense) thoughts every other day.  Either way, this whole writing thing is a part of me now and I feel empty without doing it.  I think it’s healthy and keeps me sane.

Sometimes I wish I could gather a large crowd of followers, and just make money writing about silly observations.  Wouldn’t that be nice (and completely useless towards advancing this world)?  For now, let’s stick to engineering.

~See Lemons Mweh

Side note: Mommy will be in Germany and I’m visiting Munich so no update until May 6th.