Time-Killer. Blogstalker.

Blogstalker Chronicles

The first blog in its current form I read was a blog of my friends who were involved in a political group. Then a high school classmate introduced me to his personal blog. He’s an IT person so blogging can be expected of him. He just puts there his daily activities, the stuff he’s working on, and I didn’t make a big deal of it.

I got struck with flu one day and I got so bored at home. That’s when I started to randomly check on blogs: Music and Movie Critics, until I zeroed in on by Pinoys. It was most amusing.

Back then I called myself “Bloghopper” and didn’t keep my own blog. I just read to entertain myself. I remember some of the earliest blogs I often visited was of this high school kid from St. Scho, who takes a picture of her wardrobe on a daily basis and posts it on her blog. She doesn’t put much text, just descriptions of her outfit. Now I’ve forgotten what the link was. But it was so amusing to know that a person actually does that—makes note of the clothes she wears on a daily basis. I never left comments on blogs, though.

I was doing some research for my work and came across several blogs, including that of the popular “BryanBoy”. I also stumbled upon this “feel good” campaign of Nestle Yogurt. Part of that was an online component where they featured their endorser Ala Paredes. That’s when I found out she had a blog. While I admire Mr. Jim Paredes and the Apo, I wasn’t a big Ala fan. I’ve come across a lot of celeb kids and they turn out to be the duller version of their parents. I was surprised to read Ala’s blog and note that she actually made a lot of sense and writes really well.

I began to visit Ala’s blog 2-3 a week, which makes her blog, officially-the very first blog I “stalked”. I also checked on the links in her blog and came across people whose names I heard about in school, including that of Alexi Alunan’s. I visited her blog as often as Ala’s because I found it relaxing to read about her. I read her New Year’s entry on how she was crying the whole New Year ’s Eve because of the break-up and felt sad for her [I hate it when jerks pull of stuff like that]. When she started moving on, I was so compelled to be encouraging that I posted a comment on her blog. That was one of my very first comments.

And then I thought, it was unfair for me to read about other people but keep myself completely guarded. To have an opinion about things and people but deny them to the right to do so with me is being selfish. So it is with the constant blogstalking of Ms. Alunan that I decided to “go public” with this blog.

Not that anyone would be interested to read about an insignificant fellow like me. But I realized that perhaps my bloghopping, blog-reading activity is borne, not of a physiological sickness, a tendency for voyeurism, nor is it perversion, but rather, my natural human desire to connect with another soul. If you think about it, connecting this way, via blogger: not with random chats and senseless online conversations-- but a mind-to-mind connection is like having sex without the disease, friendships without expectations, connections without strings.

You make a say. And you will not be judged by the way you look. Horse-blinders are stripped, the mind becomes unfettered…and you can genuinely connect as brothers (and sisters) living in one planet, one world,one spiritual plane.

So I continue reading on. This fellow’s political ramblings, desperately seeking for another opinion. A girl’s misfortunes in love, another girls'cursing of dirty mistresses, confessions of a dirty mistress. A girl’s poetic interpretation of love, frustration and sex. Adventures of a student in New York, a highschool students’ identity crisis, a movie-star crazed fan, a chocolate addict, an amateur photographer, a priest, friends from afar, the last girl I fell in love with living now living in another continent.

I reveal not my full name. I reveal not my likeness. But here is me: stripped off the trivia—>done away with the unnecessary information that blind us to the beauty that lies within the soul of our fellow man (woman).

posted by GOMZ @ 7:30 pm