When I first started this blog, I wrote anonymously so the moniker AYT, a nickname and running joke with a good friend, came in handy. I guess my thoughts about blogging have become less negative than they were when I first started telling stories as a way to keep in touch with friends and family during my international wanderings. However, I think the quality of writing on blogs tends toward being poor, for example, rarely do my more carefully worked out theological positions end up here (also I don't put my writing through the same editorial process I would for other avenues of publication). Some like to talk about the personal connections they've made though blogging. I'll grant that I've made some connections that I would not have otherwise. 
I've been welcomed into homes, assisted in celebration, have corresponded with, been reconnected with old friends and most recently spent a day in Paris with delightful people I met through blogging. A recent conversation made me think that making friends...
[...and we should remember that friendship requires time and usually proximity. I had a long conversation with Stanley Hauerwas once about whether you could be friends with someone you've never met. I'm at least theoretically open to the possibility but think the lack of proximity might increase the need for time...]
...through various forms of web connections in some ways inverts the order/means in which we get to know people. Normally (and here I just can't go as far as the later work of the late Jean Baudrillard in terms of our disconnect form the real), we meet people as they go about activities (activities other than creating an image for strangers to encounter), activities which we observe and glean information indirectly given. It's perhaps important to say that any online presence, while contrived, may not be necessarily reducible to activities that lead to or necessarily utilize a heightened mode of personal-image creation which interfaces like MySpace, Facebook (and often blogging) entail. Online, we have the possibility of encountering these images prior to ever making eye contact, or said differently we encounter not a subject, but an account given by the subject but without the presence of subject (and often a flat account at that in the world of online social networking). Should we afterwards have the opportunity to meet the subject, we're are further required to supplement the flat account of ourselves due to the abnormal lack of previously attainable indirect and therefore more subtle information (things communicated by eye contact, gesture, movement, dress, intonation, how and at what one laughs, etc.). This is not necessarily negative, but does make for slightly strange initial encounters. Perhaps any first encounter has its share of oddities, but these online-to-real-life encounters have their own peculiarities, namely a person may be deluded into thinking that they 'know' you because they know what kind of music you like and a list of favorite films. That said, I'm glad for the significant people in my life regardless of how they got there (though admittedly few of these are online-first relationships) .
My blog is obviously no longer anonymous, but I'm still stuck with my previously inside-joke inspired title. C'est la vie. One of the reasons for the switch (and this, again admittedly, isn't a very good reason) was that I have the lovely distinction of sharing my name with a professional angler and got tired of people looking me up and only finding info on the latest Bassmaster Classic. Generally, though my thoughts about blogging continue to morph, this remains a place where I share my thoughts and my life, my theology of an un-academic sort: stories, music, poetry and mirth. I'm generally open to answering questions, case in point: tuesok.blogspot.com. So, thanks for visiting and for the time you've spent in reading.
