Why No Comments?

The above is the question I am most frequently asked by blog-readers. If you haven't asked it at some point, you've instead gone the route of reproach. ( Example: "You should allow comments, you whore.") Here's my best answer, to be permanently linked on the side, somewhere prominent-ish, so's I can point that way in future.

Um. So now I have to explain it. Oh, great. Um.

Okay.

Short Answer:
This blog would suck if I had it open to comments.

Long Answer:
1. This blog is not like some others. I don't write with the intention of it being read. Though I occasionally write with the hopes of entertaining (or even merely addressing) certain readers, I pretty much always write for one primary reason: to get the words out of my head. That's it. It's like how you get hungry - a natural and uncontrollable urge - and you eat. And then you don't feel hungry anymore. Or you have an itch - in response, you scratch it. Then you feel better, until it itches again. That's honestly the only thing I am after with my blog: to express myself. It's a beginning and an end, in and of itself. You are a witness to it, if you choose to be. Not a participant. Okay, maybe a participant - but only a silent one.

2. Because of Reason #1, just about all the things I say here are for me to say. Not for you to respond to. Not that you can't respond to it (that's why the good lord created email), but my basic message here is that this is a monologue. It is not a dialogue. I am not asking anyone's opinion or feedback on anything that I am saying. When I want opinions/feedback, I open comments. But mostly, this is like a newspaper column. You know, one of those that don't talk about the news at all? That's me.

3. This is not to say that compliments or hate-mail aren't welcome. If you like or dislike something I wrote, feel free to let me know. My email is all the way at the bottom of the page, orin my profile. Alternatively, you can do like people sometimes do, and blog about me and/or my words in your own space. Dude, it's the internet. Everyone gets his/her/its say. Woo!

4. And the most important one: When it comes down to it, comments fuck with my head. Not necessarily the comments themselves (because I just ignore ones I don't like) (which does NOT mean that if I don't reply to a comment, then that means I didn't like it - that just means I didn't necessarily have anything to say), but the whole idea of people formulating responses to what I have to say? Interferes with what I say. I have realized - much to my amazement - that I am far more articulate and far, far, far happier with myself and what I have to say, when I say it to myself. I do not know why. It's a mystery to me. Most of me is a mystery to me, and I'm just trying to figure myself out. This place helps me to do that. Heuristic is the word, I do believe. You all get to be witnesses to that process.

5. Stick with me long enough, and you'll see that I write many things where it's obvious why I wouldn't want comments. It's really a very important place to me, my blog. And it's not all fun and games here Chez Beth. When I am in A Mood, or wrestling with my incipient alcoholism, or unearthing the not-good things in my past (or those in my present heart/mind/soul, for that matter), or going through the kinda stuff that, months later, I wonder how I lived through at all - well, for those times, I don't want discussion. Or encouragement. Or advice. Or even commiseration. Or maybe I do, who knows, but I certainly don't want it in the comments section of a blog.

People always seem surprised that I don't want feedback because, they say, it would be positive - people tend to complain because they want to say nice things about what I write, or simply to agree with something I've said. It still surprises me to find how much strangers enjoy the things I dash off here, unpolished and unthinking as so much of it is. It's not that I'm oh-so-humble - I gladly accept praise (see #3, above). My friend, an experienced and skilled writer with loads more talent than I could ever dream of having (and more commercial and critical success than 99% of writers will ever enjoy) once told me what she'd learned from her years of writing - about the impulse, the act of writing, the sharing it with others: Praise is more dangerous than the negative crap, because it's more addictive. And the more you crave it, she said, the more your writing will be for other people, and less for yourself. And then it will suck. And it will be No Fun. And you will hate it, and yourself for writing away from the truth. (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the general idea.)

So since I
(a) truly don't need or even want the validation of commentators in order to keep me happy and to keep me writing this, and
(b) truly do need the self-communion thang that I get in writing this here blog,
I therefore
(c) do not enable the commenting function.

Except on Mondays, which is Smart Bitches Day. Because I figure it's only fair, what with how I can comment on all the participants's's blogses.

So there's that. I will open the comments on this post, and they (it?) will stay perpetually open. Feel free to say whatever. Or not. Or ask other questions, since I've got that out of the way!