Why Blog?
Editor's Note: Show Me Your Context, Baby: My Love Affair with Blogs won the Editor's Choice Award in trAce and Writers for the Future's New Media Article Writing Competition. (Excerpt follows...)
"Through blogs I have found another conduit into the awesome responsibility of being human. This electronic nervous system of interconnected thoughts highlights the individuals in the masses while strengthening the ties that bind us. In the tales of your cancer treatments, in your accounts of trips home, in your assertions that your fathers are all assholes, I have found solace and fresh understanding.You are, like me, mostly a powerless human with only your unique perspective to save you from feelings of helplessness in the face of despair. These are times when you can declare that the universe is not unfolding as it should. These are times when you know exactly who to blame and you should demand that other voices join your plea for sanity. This is when you blog and I read you."
I guess the author nailed me on that last paragraph. I started blogging two years ago when my tiny universe became contorted and confusing, the way forward clouded in cosmic dust. I wasn't looking for anyone to blame, necessarily. It was largely an implosion of my own making, being home every day in this remote eddy of civilization and not a part of the great stream of corporate life. I wrote to show myself that each day is a universe of its own, with its particular beauties and mysteries. Mine was not a plea for sanity, but for awareness; not a call for justice but for gratitude.
Why do you blog? What gives you the passion and discipline to continue? What has it brought to you, to your readers? Where to you see yourself going with your weblog in two years?
Comments
The only answer I can give to your last series of questions is that I don't know. Catharsis, maybe, but certainly not limited to that. Maybe I'll know better at two years.
Posted by: Rob | July 25, 2004 1:22 PM
I blog in an attempt to reach out and communicate with people from different parts of the world. I am certainly not a writer, nor do I pretend to be, but I blog in the hope that a handful of people will find my part of the world and what goes on it as interesting as I find theirs.
Posted by: Jenny | July 25, 2004 10:05 PM
"Why do you blog?" It forces me to write and to organize my thoughts. I enjoy challenging and entertaining people, and I love the sort of conversations that sometimes come about in comment strings.
"What gives you the passion and discipline to continue?" What discipline? Procrastination is the main thing fueling my blog. It's a great enabler.
"What has it brought to you, to your readers?" More babes than I can count!
O.k., just kidding.
It has brought me a few new friends and many interesting acquaintances. It has prompted me to write a lot more than I would have otherwise, including some of the best essays and poems ever to flow from my pen - and I've only been at it for seven and a half months. As for my readers, you'd have to ask them. I am perpetually amazed that anyone would want to read the kind of B.S. I habitually sling.
"Where do you see yourself going with your weblog in two years?" I haven't a clue. Almost every afternoon I think, "That's it. I've said everything I could possibly have to say. This can't continue." But somehow it does. "We can't go on meeting like this," I say to my blog. But we do. Oh the shame, the degredation!
Posted by: Dave | July 26, 2004 2:10 PM
I blog because I like writing and because I'm an opinionated S O B - so blogging is perfect! Once you start it is addictive. BB (Before Blog) my writing was intermittent and unfocussed. Now I write much more regularly and I get to chat to interesting people. I'm still all over the place thought!
Posted by: ian | July 26, 2004 3:03 PM