Does a blogger have to be a blagger?

Back in May 2013 I wrote: “it’s impossible to be a blogger without being a blagger” and I read that again earlier today. It started me thinking about the place of ego in a blog. And that sent me off down an attention rabbit hole, where I went looking for the books by Daryl Sharp that are sitting on my book shelves. That is where I found fabulous insight about typology and shadow. Sharp is a Jungian – began his career as a journalist, then trained as an analyst in Zürich. He set up Inner City Books in Toronto and worked as an analyst and publisher. His own books are wonderful narratives populated with characters that he derives from his own archetypes – the different aspects of his personality – to illustrate how Jungian principles work. It’s all so much easier to read than a dry text-book.

The ego means different things in different versions of psychology, and in my own wider use of the word I am usually talking about the need to get our own sense of identity into some sort of control, so that we are not pursuing our own interest without regard for others. To achieve this, we need to begin with the practise of humility, or perhaps more accurately, altruism.

Altruism is not the practise of a doormat. It doesn’t mean that we subjugate our own need to those of others at all times. Rather, it is about focusing on others, but acting with wisdom for their own good. That might be a difficult path sometimes.

And so back to the opening lines of this post… if blogging is carried out with too much of a sense of “I am” it can be tiresome. But… and it’s an important but, we do need to have enough of a sense of self-worth and value in what we write about to share it. And sometimes it is the seemingly small things, that seem really obvious – that others find particularly useful. Don’t judge your own work too harshly.