How your mind looks on the web, part 2.

In a recent post, I asked: "What do you think is the single most important question about this blog?" Ricardo offered this answer:

At some deep visceral core level, blogging (like most other creative endeavors) is about "actualization" (as Mazlow might say). Writers write because they can't not write. Painters paint because they can't not paint. Photographers photograph because they can't not photograph. Bloggers blog because they can't not blog. This is what they have to do in order to see the world through the right prism. This is how they learn the lessons they are meant to learn, find the answers they are meant to find, complete their mission in life that they are meant to complete. So the most important question here is not some surface issue, but the deeper issue of "Is this blog actualizing Althouse in the way that her heart and soul are crying out to be actualized?"

That makes me think back to that old slogan about blogging "How your mind looks on the web." I wrote about that back here, just 10 days into the life of blogging. (I was really into being terse and enigmatic back then.)

Why am I making a post out of Ricardo's comment? For one thing, it struck me to read the word "soul" right after doing the previous post with the quote from the conference....

But I need to dash off and relocate myself... so I'll finish this post in a few minutes. How my mind/soul/heart look on the web will have to be subordinated -- for the moment -- to where my body is situated on the face of the Earth.

ADDED: I seem to have stumbled into a "conservative soul" theme that makes it seems as though I ought to read Andrew Sullivan's book. Too bad he annoyed me so much the other week! (The soul of Althouse is riddled with spite and pique! Is that liberal or conservative... or somehow ineffably centrist?)

MORE: Hey, whatever happened to I'll finish this post in a few minutes? Sorry, I had to relocate to my office to do office hours and students actually came to them. I wasn't expecting that! So, anyway, where was I going with this, before the nonvirtual world grabbed hold of me? Let's see... Is this blog actualizing Althouse? Hmmm.... The opposite of "actualizing" might be virtualizing. This blog has definitely done something to me. I'm afraid it has completely restructured my brain! Whether that's the real me or not... is just more material for another blog post.