blogger blues

I got the low down dirty town fucked around drunken clown bathtub lager blogger blues.

I know, I know. Bathtub lager makes no sense. But the Unknown Poet doesn’t do custom work and I’m in a hurry to get to the point.

A Glasgow University study released this week seems to suggest that keeping a diary makes you depressed, or being depressed causes you to keep a diary, or both. The findings were unclear. What was clear is that students at the Scottish University who kept diaries were more likely to suffer from depression than those who did not. The authors of the study did not comment on the curse of self-awareness or the writing habits of those who are immune to it but did cite Virginia Woolf’s compulsive journaling and lifelong depression while failing to mention my Uncle Ray, who kept a diary for the better part of eighty years and is still happy as a clam as long as there’s beer in the fridge.

The authours admitted surprise at the lack of evidence of therapeutic catharsis, once thought to be the best reason for keeping a diary. Uncle Ray kept a diary mostly to help him remember where he left his car and that could be a telling difference. One possible explanation offered by the authours for their findings is that rather than producing the expected catharsis, writing in a diary may cause the diarist to concentrate on or “stew over” their problems all the more.

The study did not comment specifically on bloggers but the implications are troubling.

Blogging may be hazardous to your mental health.