Sunday, January 11, 2004

Why We I Blog

Over a year ago, Eric had some interesting thoughts about the stages a blogger goes through when settling into the form; in his experience and, later, mine, navel-gazing -- that time when we spend much of our thought thinking about thinking, and what it means that we're doing this thing we call blog -- necessarily marked its own stage, if only because, so far, the raison d'etre of the blog is still in the jury room. (You'll note that most of the "blogging as media" links over there ------> on the sidebar date from a relatively finite time frame, for example.)

This makes sense. Finding ones own way into blogging, and making ones own meaning of self and symbology, medium and mind, would necessarily be an essential stage in growing towards a user-of-blog, if only because blogging is

But the questions are worth coming back to; if we accept that we change, and that our knowledge needs might change accordingly, performance review of the self and soul seem imperative to health. Thanks to Anne, and to those who follow her threads, for asking about why we started blogging, which prompted a more general think-back and refinement. I'm still thinking a bit about why I'm here -- and maybe when I'm done I'll have time to ask about all of us -- but, for what it's worth, here's what I left in her comments.

I started blogging, actually, for two reasons:

1. I had a student in my Media Literacy class get me all excited about blogs when she did a project exploring their relevance to the digital age.
2. I wanted my new daughter to have a history of me to browse someday.

Notice: not typical reasons, if there is such a thing. I've BEEN a published writer, both journalistically and in my academic field; I enjoyed it, but it's a heck of a lot of work, and I prefer to publish for real only once or twice a year (still do, actaully). Peripherally, I also always wanted to have a diary that actually demanded that I keep up with it. Having a public diary-form did this for me -- once I had just one regular reader, I had enough reason to keep it up. Better to externalize such a push -- make the world your enabler! Much better than those start-em-and-kill-em-a-week-later high school and collegial "journals" that litter my attic.

posted by boyhowdy | 10:46 PM |

---

Comments:
Post a Comment