Survey Says

Posted on May 22, 2006 in Blogging

Paul Gillin is surveying bloggers for a book about social media.

Here is my answer to a question about motivations:

Motivation? As in having a clear cut reason for why I do it? I can’t say that I have any of these. The blog exists because I write it, put my spirit into it. I know there are those who write to move others to a viewpoint or to make new friends. I suppose you could pin one or more of these on me, but then you leave a big hole which the conventional structure cannot cover.

There are those who separate their political blogs from their personal blogs from their photo blogs from their cat blogs, etc. After trying this, I came back to blogging on my own. This is all about me, my views, my experiences, my reading. I’ve worked on group blogs, but to do so means to surrender a part of oneself to an authority that may not like my independence or overreact when my illness expresses itself.

It is likely that you are ascribing my “atypical” reaction to my illness. If so, this is your problem. I know what my illness wreaks better than you do. The facets that I describe are aspects of my personality, not my disease, an vital distinction to make. I surround myself with people who have bipolar disorder these days because they know the discrimination that I am talking about and do not write it off as due to euphoria or gloom. There’s a motivation for you: building a network of people who care, who won’t jump to conclusions, who will ask meaningful questions and not run down the tracks that conventional habits of mind have formed about mental illness. If I seem defensive,consider what I have been subjected to.