by Madeleine KandoI have been spending an awful lot of time lately getting this blog ‘optimized’. It is, of course, a never ending process, especially for someone like me, who has an obsessive compulsive nature.
I am starting to feel the side-effects of too much web searching, too much sitting on my posterior. I have forgotten what blogging is really about – writing good stuff for those of you out there, who seem to enjoy it.
But even blogging is a term that needs to be put under a magnifying glass. 'Web logging' is the original term. So, what exactly are you logging, when you web log?
I can understand the word ‘logging’ in the context of a world explorer, like Christopher Columbus. He logged his journey, so that, in case he shipwrecked, there would be a record of his attempts at discovering the other half of the world. But logging what color lipstick you are going to wear to a party? Is that worthy of anyone’s reading time?
Let's be honest, except for the few outstanding blogs out there in whose category I will never dare put myself, most blogs are really diaries with a whole lot of ballony and very little substance. On a blog you can voice any trivial thought that would have gone unsaid under the old rules of the printed page. The cost of printing was a safeguard against b.s.
Besides, most bloggers don't want to read other blogs, they want others to read THEIR blogs, including me. After all, aren’t we all the center of the blog universe?
My husband, who doesn’t blog, doesn’t comment on blogs, doesn’t read blogs (except mine, after we’ve had a fight and he is trying to kiss up to me), is the smart one. He knows that other people’s diaries are just random thoughts that should really be kept in a blogger’s head rather than have them pollute the internet. I mean, one of the first things babies have to learn is not to defecate all over the place. The same should apply to bloggers.
I know what you are thinking: ‘look who’s talking?’ Yes, I guess you are right. I am the worst offender. Here I am, ranting about blogging, while I am blogging.
But at least I am conscious of my own egomaniac personality. My ‘diary’ has helped me get things off my chest without constantly harassing my husband. It has been a place to ‘pretend’ write. Will I ever write for real? Like a story that is longer than a two-page rant?
Aaah, now that I have got THAT off my chest I can continue with my attempt at 'optimization'. That way you can all benefit from my infinite wisdom on the futility of blogging. leave comment here
3 comments:
You are too hard on yourself (I realize that you are also facetious).
I don’t know about other blogs, but ours is quite good, and not just navel gazing. We post many sociologically and politically relevant pieces. I receive many compliments.
The Internet is indeed a cacophony of everyone wanting to be heard, but not all voices are equally good.
The act of keeping an accurate log of a journey has nothing to do with back-traking. As any skillful navigator knows, you can't go back in time regardless of the course you set. You are always going forward into an uncertain future.
A log, diary or journal serves the purpose of helping the navigator know roughly where he or she IS at any given point in time. And as any skillful navigator in time knows, such knowledge can be helpful going forward.
I have kept many logs over the years. I have logs of my many sailing voyages and of my years backpacking around the world and of my work as a consultant. No one has read my logs and I rarely go back and read what I had written in the past. My logs served their purpose at the time and place of their creation.
I remember a few writers and artists who when interviewed, were asked to explain some past work. The ones I admired most were those who answered that they could not explain the meaning of their previous work products because they were no longer the person who had produced them. I can certainly say the same of my logs and blogs.
"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it"
Blogging is a form of writing used for many ends. Most commonly it has become a form of self-advertisement by which the Blogger hopes to realize some emotional and/or financial gain. It seems to me that these bloggers are not logging. They have stopped traveling and imagine their "selves" fixed in time. But for me, blogging is a form of navigating by which means I become better able to know where I am in time going forward in experience. I find the act of blogging both useful and (mostly) enjoyable.
I will admit that the aims of my experiment in logging out-loud---of blogging---are not entirely clear to me but I do have a modest audience and I remain curious about where the logging out-loud journey might lead going forward.
Marc and Tom:
I was secretly hoping that this post would go unnoticed. I can no longer explain the meaning of it because I wrote it in a moment of frustration and at the time it made perfect sense.
Like you say, Marc, I am no longer the person who produced it. I have moved on to become a serious appreciater of blogs.
All joking aside, of course blogging is important to me, otherwise I wouldn't do it. And your blog, Marc, ranks right up there.
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