Today’s podcast is my commentary on a guest blog post shared for your reference below. This is part of the Guest of the month group that I’ve become a part of. If you’re interested in learnning more about becoming a guest poster on other people’s blogs, definitely check out this page, and Emily who reads everything will provide you all of the information. The individual who is guest posting for me today is Jocelyn of “52 letters in the alphabet | for readers who write, and writers who read”
–Jocelyn
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Beyond the thoughts I share on my blog are the more personal moments—the incredibly boring and incredibly meaningful parts of my life that do not translate themselves into witty blog posts or Tweets. A major portion of my life is dedicated to reading and writing, but not even all of that energy gets conveyed on my blog.
I’m an introvert at heart. Blogging—joining a social community outside of my “real life” friends—was a big step for me to take, and I constantly have to push myself to interact with other bloggers, rather than just hiding under my rock and occasionally posting book reviews. Because of this, the portion of my life that I share on my blog is a tiny window into the complexities of my day-to-day life.
Most of my time that does not go into writing blog posts—and admittedly, I only write posts on weekends—goes toward high school. Homework, studying, extracurriculars, laughing with friends and complaining with friends—this is my life ninety percent of the time. And about eighty percent of the time, I’m okay with that. (The other twenty percent usually gets turned into poems, which I sometimes share, but often decide not to.)
Here’s what I do when I’m not a book blogger: I’m a debater on my school’s Speech and Debate team. I fence outside of school for a workout, now that I’ve gotten the horrific PE requirement out of the way. I’m an editor for my school’s newspaper and a member of my city’s Youth Town Council. I’ve been writing a novel for the last year (or years, depends what draft we’re talking about), but in intermittent bursts with longer and longer periods of “radio silence” in between. All of these hobbies come together to ensure that I rarely have a “night off,” and that I always have something I should be doing (and that I’m probably procrastinating on).
Blogging gives me an escape from all of that by letting me distill my life down to the books I read, some of the less personal writing I do, and some random fangirlling when I’m in the mood for it.
Beyond 52 Letters in the Alphabet, I’m your average, slightly socially awkward teenager. I watch a lot of TV, and get overly emotionally invested in my favorite characters. (Don’t even get me started on The West Wing or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) Netflix is my BFF, except for my real friends, who are some of my favorite things in the whole world. I study less than I should and more than I want to. I generally enjoy school, until anything goes wrong. Weirdly, I enjoy Calculus, though I have no intention of pursuing math as a career.
And if all of these facts seem disjointed and random, then you’re right. I’m a teenager who doesn’t know what her major is going to be in college—I don’t even know where I want to go for college. I know my favorite subjects, but they are rarely my favorite classes to take. I do a lot of different things outside of school, and depending on what kind of week it’s been, I like each of those activities a different amount. In a lot of ways, I am disjointed and random—just like this (slightly rambling, I know and I’m sorry) post. My blog is a place where I get to carefully organize my thoughts and make myself look a lot more put-together than I am in real life—than I am in my life beyond the blog.
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