More Thoughts about Blogging
I began blogging before the word had become part of the common vernacular. In the early days, people wrote about their day – their life. Online journals formed the basis of LiveJournal, DiaryLand, and Blogger. Any thoughts of blogs covering niche subjects such as cooking, parenting, fashion, or beauty products were years away.
While I count myself among that “first wave” – that shared mundane moments of their daily life with the passing crowd, I can't help feeling that it's almost become a game of last-man-standing. The social networks and walled gardens have seduced the majority. Perhaps that's the real driver behind the creation of this blog – an outpost of sorts, standing almost alone in the internet ocean. Me, railing at Windmills (how many more badly distorted literary references can I conjure?).
Writing online has become the Emperor's New Clothes (and there's another one). Everyone has been brainwashed to believe that writing online should be short, snappy, direct, regular, and focused. Forgive me for saying it, but that's a sausage machine, and all they're good at is churning out the same crap – again, and again – predictably.
Who wants to be predictable? Who wants to be the same?
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this – but perhaps that's the point. I'm writing freestyle, with no aim, and no direction. What you're reading is almost a direct transcript of my thoughts as they left my brain, rolled through my fingers and appeared on the screen. The improvised stage play versus the edited movie.
I am reminded of “Finding Forrester”, where the reclusive author sits his student in front of a typewriter and instructs him to write. Not to think – just to write – write anything. It's a similar idea to National Novel Writing Month, where quantity is valued over quality. There will be a lot of garbage, there might also be brilliance.
Perhaps I do have a direction here.
Expect to start seeing longer posts from me. Long, meandering streams of thought. By wrestling your way through them you might even get to know me a little better – or at least better than you might through a photo of a cat, a quote of a philosopher, or a transcribed conversation from a television show.