So recently I have been discovering the strange landscape of the blog world. I had no concept of blogging as a phenomenon when I started writing this one. I started so that I could share travel photos with friends in a creative format. I then kept going because I discovered that I enjoyed the process of sharing my personal life journey for several different reasons. Firstly because I hoped that if I shared it, and others found it somehow useful or inspiring or thought provoking, then it would give a layer of meaning to my meanderings through the valleys and peaks of this strange journey of life I find myself upon. Secondly it helped me to process and understand my own thoughts and feelings better because, unlike a personal journal, when blogging I had to consider not just my own thoughts but how others may react or see them. In stepping back a little and restructuring my thinking into blog format I was able to step back emotionally and experience a change in perspective on the issue. Thirdly it allows me a creative outlet in times when my daily hours are somewhat occupied by the demands and chores of life. In this way blogging is "my time" in a very public way. Fourthly I blog so that the people I know who read it can know a little of where I am up to without me needing to have long and involved phone conversations with each of them individually. Its a strange new cyber world, but reading each others blogs is sometimes our most personal interaction over the week.
Since the birth of my child I have straddled the divide between blogging as a forum for sharing of thoughts and ideas, and blog-boasting about how cute my kid is. This is a fifth reason for blogging - it is a collection of images of the important times in my life that are held together for safe-keeping (as safe as cyber world is).
Recently I have become more interested and connected to reading other "professional" blogs. I was somewhat surprised and interested to realise that there is a whole culture of bloggers out there... there is blog-language, common and successful blog-formats, and a competition to secure followers/subscribers. And the blogs are highly professional, representing huge hours of work and a significant commitment to creating a popular product. They are fun and funny, and there are even awards for all different types - including the MADS - the Mums and Dads blogging awards for people who write with great wit and humanity about the trials and tribulations of the parenting experience.
I am not in that league in the slightest. My blog is lacking in theme, patchy, messy and too personal. I swing between personal sharing in journal style, to holiday snaps, to kid snaps, to philosophising, to requoting things of interest that I find on-line...
But its mine, and so it is like me... contradictory, colourful, genuine, messy, distracted, sometimes funny (oh yes I am!) sometimes sad, thoughtful, reactive, passionate, loving, unclear of what it wants to be in life but somehow plodding forward and working it out as it goes along.
Recently I have noticed some subscribers to my blog who I don't know... and I found this terribly thrilling! Half of my friends in the real world don't bother to read my scribblings so I am honoured that anyone out there in blogger land would take the time. To all those who read me, I thank you from the bottom of my heart - you make it all worth while. I want to tell you that I will try to be more consistent, to stick to a theme, to become more professional and refined...but really - its likely to go the way of my recent weight loss pledge - and the less said about that the better at the moment!
Smiles to all
No comments:
Post a Comment