It's been many moons since my last blog post, but blogging definitely hasn't been out of my thoughts. With schedules increasingly cramped, something had to give this past semester, but I certainly don't intend to give it up. But even when/if I finally did get around to sitting down and staring blankly at an empty post editor, a question kept nagging me like a badly-made shirt tag. What am I doing here? I looked back at all the words I've typed, removed, and re-typed in the past year and wondered why on earth I felt compelled to throw them on a board viewable to the rest of the internet world. What is a blog supposed to be, anyway? According to the Wikipedia, a blog is a "discussion or informational site published on the worldwide web and consisting of discrete entries typically displayed in reverse chronological order." Wiki is pretty dry, but when you pick Blogger down to its core, to me:
It's a mental organization tool. Ironing out my thoughts to the point where I feel comfortable publicizing them really forces me to concretely express whatever I might think abstractly, but struggle to show.
It's a social network. A place to read others' thoughts, record your own, and participate in some really great discussion. I've been blessed over the past three years or so to interact with many many smart, friendly, spiritual bloggers at home that have really inspired me to be a better blogger and a better person. I'm so grateful for that opportunity.
It's a web log (literally.) A recording of where you've been and where you are, whatever road you're on, whether literal, theoretical, or mental.
It's whatever you want it to be. When blogging, you can make your blog whatever you want it to be. Any topic, any style, any pace. The possibilities are absolutely endless.After those endless possibilities have been exercised, a blog frequently becomes a reflection of whoever controls it. So, when I ask myself what I want my blog to be, at the problem's core, maybe I'm questioning how I want to define myself. Maybe even questioning who I am. Scary thought.
So, I've had to think a little bit more about what I want this blog to be. And I'm still ironing that out. Films and TV shows inevitably find their way into my head regularly (though not for lack of other things to think about.) I love picking apart their themes, characters, stylistic approaches, what works, what doesn't work, generally what the creators have done and why. Movies have a habit of sticking with me. But even as I stare at the swollen, bulbous "Movies" label latched onto my sidebar like a tick threatening to pop, I still can't get myself to call this a "Movie" blog. Ultimately, I don't usually contemplate the movies as movies, but as vehicles for threads of thought; and those thoughts can ramble to a galaxy far far away from whatever material I started with. That doesn't make for good movie reviews. It's hard to say you blog about whatever trains of thought you might be riding day to day, but maybe that's just what I'll be forced to do.
This blog may not be entirely well defined yet. For now, I do have some new posts in the works and hope to have them here very soon. Because at the end of the third day, Blogging can't help but provide a great way to interact with others, as well as a good exercise in keeping up with writing, thinking, communication, and self-motivation. Why would I pass that up?
Definition will come with time. Until then, we blog on.
6 comments:
What about y'all? What does blogging mean to you? Do you have something you particularly like to think/blog about?
Blogging started out as a way for me to experiment with writing things that strangers could see. Now, for me, it's equal parts a way to discuss things I love with other people and a way to make myself actually think about the things I read and watch. And I do like being able to go back and see what I'd thought about a movie or book that I might remember very well anymore.
It's funny how we tend to write a little differently for the public's eyes, but that capacity to communicate is probably something very valuable to have. Love how blogging helps to exercise that muscle, so to speak.
I know I've also experienced that sense of forcing yourself to think about the things you consume. It feels great to go a little deeper. Being able to get things on paper (or code, as it were) really does serve as a nice platform for thinking, sharing, and remembering. Just like you said much, more eloquently than I! =)
It's so funny -- I have a completely different writing "voice" for blogging than I do my other writing. Well, maybe not completely different, but different. Like, when I write guest posts for someone else's blog, I have to write them in my Blogger window, not in a Word doc, because if I use a Word doc, I sound different. It's so odd.
I've gotten that feeling too! Very weird. I know a lot of bloggers use Word for their posts, but I can only write them in the Blogger window. When I use Word it comes out way too formal and stiff. Very stiff. But I suppose practice will make perfect, even in blogging. =)
I write my short stories and novels in Word, so it's not like it's an unfamiliar format. Maybe it's just that I wrote so many college papers in Word that if I'm writing a review, I feel like it should be a lit paper instead? Who knows! I'm glad I'm not the only person who has that experience, at least :-)
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