BitterSweetLife

Do Blogs Affect Our Behavior?

My conscience has driven me to confess: Just the other day I found myself rescuing a stunned caterpillar, scooping him off a hazardous driveway…specifically so I could write about it on my blog. Over the ensuing days, I’ve seen the little larva countless times in my mind’s eye, stretched as if paralyzed on the asphalt. He has haunted my dreams. He pursues me through the corridors of my mind, whispering: I could have died, would have. Could have, would have, could have, would have—if not for your stupid blog.

Oops, got a bit carried away there. So I guess the caterpillar incident didn’t have earth-shattering implications. Nevertheless, it triggered some kind of cautionary response, and now I’m wondering just how great an impact a blog might have on its author, given sufficient time and scope. Would the blog-driven changes become noticeable? Would they be “artificial,” because they were induced, as it were, by an external influence (i.e. BitterSweetLife)? What types of acts might a blogger be driven to perform in order to provide editorial fodder? And would they be beneficial or detrimental? I guess that would depend on the blog.

As I consider my own journey through the moral twilight of blogging, let me record that it began with a caterpillar. But where might it end? What desperate feats and abnormal accomplishments will I deliberately pursue for the sake of my blog? (Just for kicks, let’s end on the same speculative note with which we began.) I can hear the 60 Minutes theme music cueing up now… “Blogger Gate: It began with a liberated larva…and culminated in a multifarious* internet plot to infiltrate Democratic headquarters and paint carefully selected Jack Handey quotations on the walls. Investigators tracked their culprit through cyberspace, slapping him with an inescapable verdict: Guilty, by his own admission. Guilty, as published on his blog…

This word was used in association with The Vocabulary Reclamation Project.
*Multifarious. A smooth-bodied adjective with a subtle undertone of swagger. Essentially meaning: multi-dimensioned, complex, sophisticated. More clinical synonyms include: diversiform, multivarious, multiplex. Try using it in the workplace.