Ha! Considering the blog started to turn into THESIS BLOG in June 2010, it now seems a rather lofty goal. But up until then I had talked about my knitting, mostly, with a bit of music and anime thrown in for good change. And then I started with pictures of flowers. I worked so much in July 2010 that I had no time to knit and the computer broke and the thesis ... and I started illustrating my blog with pictures of Vienna and Scotland. Before going completely silent in September, I posted pictures from Switzerland, the Czech Republic and, once again, Vienna. Then I finally returned to blogging in February 2011, after I had finished the thesis and started posting pictures of the sky and the moon. And a few knitted items, too. Then, more pictures of flowers and of places I had been to - Hungary and Germany.
So why the heck did I post so many (pretentious, show-offy) pictures of flowers, the sky and the places I had been? I mean, sheesh, for my travels, I actually have albums on facebook. Why here? I'm not even using the pictures to illustrate how certain colors of certain places INSPIRED me (caps because pretentious). My inspiration doesn't work that way. The rhododendrons in the last post made me think of underwear, not knitting. Maybe it's because I don't have a lot of confidence in my writing. The other blog was eloquent, if at times infuriating (because trite, wrong or pretentious, also some elements of the writing style got on my nerves very much). I feel like my posts aren't eloquent at all. I feel they're short and matter-of-fact and there's a lot of "-" and "...".
The knitblogs I like to read the most are eloquent and funny. And they make the daily life of their writers sound interesting. One of my favorite blogs doesn't even have pictures - or only very rarely. I don't trust my sense of humour to come across very well, it is weird, nerdy and obscure. My daily life isn't very interesting, either. I could rant away about the person playing saxophone in the other room (who is leaving in a few days, I'm glad to say) or about the lack of a shower curtain or the brothel or whatever it actually is (officially a swinger club/sauna ... yeah, right) in our house or the weird owner of the hotel in the house behind us who screams at people who put their trash in the trashcans because sometimes there are people who don't live in our house who deposit their trash in our trashcan, but while I love reading about such things on other blog, I, myself, don't feel like writing about them.
I could show you pictures of my room, of the flat I share with two other people, of the house and district I live in - but I'm shy about posting pictures of my own self and I wonder if my readers (I do have readers, the blog stats say so) actually would find it interesting to see where I live. I'm also afraid of looking pretentions in the way of "ooooo, look at me, I live in VIENNA in a house with JUGENDSTIL windows on the TOP FLOOR in one of the HIP DISTRICTS". But why did I post pictures of Vienna and other places I've visited, then? Nothing else to say or show, I guess. And the idea that a blog post without pictures is a bad blog post (I think I read that somewhere). Well, maybe I should take pictures of my chaotic room ...
Where is that line between pretentious and "oh look, I went here and saw this neat thing"? Where is the line between twee and "these are the buttons I'm going to use for this cardigan"? Showing you pictures of the two bowls that I got last week from a jumble sale - is that pretentious? After reading the other blog, I guess the answer is: yes. Showing you my grandmother's soup bowl that I use in place of a yarn bowl - that wouldn't be pretentious, I hope. It's not like it's a superduper expensive treasure or something. It's just a soup bowl.
But the other bowls aren't either. And they aren't even from the 19th century or anything. Googling has revealed that they must have been produced between 1939 and 1945 and inspection has revealed that I scratched the surface of one of the bowls during transport (bad porcelain, I must say). Showing you the earrings my mother gave me for my birthday - pretentious, I guess (really?). Is showing you the earrings that I recently bought from a place that sells cheap jewelry and repainted with nailpolish pretentious or a useful idea?
I do know that I feel jealous of bloggers who post pictures of the beautiful places they live in and the places they visit and the knick-knacks they own and the things they knit, always photographed against interesting backgrounds, in great clothes and neat shoes and headscarves and makeup. Actually, when I see the things they own, I want to own them, too. And I am jealous of their lives, too. Heck, I, too, would like somebody else to take pictures of me in my knitting in nice clothes and makeup in beautiful locations. I'd love to be married and have children, too. But I already have plenty of twee knick-knacks and buttons and live in a beautiful place and I have opportunities to go to beautiful places and knit beautiful things and I can take pictures of flowers and the moon and whatever else strikes my fancy. And marriage and children will come (hopefully). And why shouldn't I post these things on my blog? It's my blog, after all.
But I now feel just as pretentious as those bloggers. Displaying my privileged life and the stuff I own was not one of my intentions when I started this blog and now it's even less my intention. But it's so easy to hide behind beautiful pictures. It's easy to say "I went to Bonn and to the country and killed millions of dandelions" and not talk about the things that I should be doing (looking for a job, among other things). And damn, whining about the loss I feel after finishing my thesis is pretentious, too, which is why I haven't done it here.
I also find the pretentious blogs boring. There, I said it. Yes, buttons, yes, knitting, yes, whatever. I'm curious about your life, not your buttons. Well, I'm definitely a voyeur, heck, I see nothing wrong with what Jimmie Stewart did in Rear Window. But then, I am a historian, a professional voyeur of people's lives in the past. I'm immensely curious about the way people lived and continue to live (a convenient excuse), so I want to know how the knitbloggers live, too. Otherwise, show me your knitting and plenty of it.
But all this makes me wonder - what the heck should I write about on this blog then? Well, maybe I should write more about my knitting and take pictures of me in it, even if I'm not wearing makeup and the background is chaotic! I've also come to the conclusion that writing about knitting itself can be pretty pretentious, too, but still, I haven't done a post about "what knitting MEANS to me" yet. Maybe I should do that (don't worry, it won't be about CONNECTIONS or CONSUMERISM). Maybe I should just write what I want to write and show what I want to show and concentrate on my own life instead of looking at all the others and wondering why they seem to have it so much "other" than me. Of course other people lead different lives and write different blogs, duh.
Maybe it's time for a new job
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