The blog as confessional: unchartered territory and yet I do it all the time.
That means, then, there are two categories of confession - there are the things which lie just underneath my most conscious experience (I do it all the time) and those of which I am painfully aware but never speak of (unchartered territory).
Examples in the first category which I have mentioned on here in the past are: I am attracted to a work colleague; I called a child a cunt in the hope of corrupting him; I didn't dare to look at my grandmother's body because I knew it would haunt me forever. These are small, individual statements which give an insight into the character of the person blogging, but which are too broad and insufficiently regular to permit general conclusions to be drawn.
Unchartered territory, then, implies something more serious, and more difficult - something which suggests a trait, and exists at least semi-permanently. It silently expresses the hope that a change can be made, once the unvarnished truth is upon us, even though the last time I ever imparted something particularly weighty, life continued much as normal. (This was the fear that I might have Asperger's Syndrome, and I never progressed further than an e-mail to some society or other, which bounced. The desire to be diagnosed, then, was weaker than the inertia which does not want to change. More than two years later, I remain as I was.)
Enough prevaricating. Your author is hopelessly addicted to the internet, and has been for years. The most amusing thing is the use of the internet to confirm my own need for it - what more evidence could anyone require?
I could happily never touch another drop of alcohol, I have never had a cigarette in my mouth, and have never taken a drug other than those prescribed by a doctor or bought in a chemist's. They do nothing for me, and those who depend on them are weak-willed. Yet the internet? I should be lost without the glut of information upon which I gorge, the forums, the anonymity, the instant messengers, the blogs.
I don't even know if I want it to change, let alone whether I could. The truth is writ large, though, now, and I can hardly be a worse person for it.
