I have not been blogging for long. I started this blog on April 4, 2003. However, I have found blogging to have become central in my life. Why?
I am sure there are more reasons, but these are the ones that come to mind immediately.
- I am more attuned to the news and central issues that concern the people of the world than I have ever been by using any other source and am easily able to access a varied array of viewpoints on any issue.
- I am more easily able to put forth my thoughts, opinions and viewpoints in a format where it can be easily disseminated.
- I feel that I have become part of a community of socially conscious people who are genuinely concerned with the issues.
One of the amazing things that comes from blogging is that you are continually finding very interesting items from the tools associated with blogging. I regularly check to see who is commenting to my posts. These comments often give me instant access into the mind set of my readers. I usually immediately visit their site to see what kind of fare they are offering their own readers. Very often, I blogroll their site. An example of one that would not be on my blogroll is this one where a blogger is so blatantly a one-sided zealot that the logic of their arguments is to suspect to be of any value. I additionally will sometimes remove a site from my blogroll if I find a valid reason for doing so.*
I use the blogroll as my personal reading list. To me, the blogroll is an extension of my personality, values and tastes. Not every site on my blogroll has linked to me, but I do not make that a requirement, as I also do not automatically blogroll every site that links to mine. The sites on my blogroll are those sites I enjoy reading. I visit them often. I link to their posts.
The trackbacks, also, are essential tools. If someone has linked to one of my posts, you can bet I want to see what they had to say about it. Such occurred when The Metal Wings of Destiny linked to this post. Although the commentary only used my post to point to a trend about which posts seemed to be getting the most comments in several blogs, the commentary pointed to this story in The Register. There was a lot of mindless drivel in the story about how the majority of bloggers were teenage girls venting their hormone induced diatribes about life, love and fantasy. I have actually visited such blogs on occasion, but do not think any are on my blogroll. I did find this excerpt, however, to be apropos:
**[B]logging is a solitary activity that requires the blogger to spend less time reading a book, taking the dog for the walk, meeting friends in the pub, seeing a movie, or reading to the kids. The reason that 99.93 per cent of the world doesn't blog, and never will, is because people make simple information choices in what they choose to ingest and produce, and most of this will be either personal and private, or truly social. Blog-evangelists can fulminate at the injustice of this all they like, but people are pretty smart and make fairly rational choices on the information they process.Interesting people run interesting blogs, but it's remarkable how few of them there are. [emphasis supplied]
I am just not so sure that there are not more interesting people running interesting blogs than the author is aware of. And of course, it would highly depend upon what someone thought was interesting. I am sure that what I write is interesting to some, and, just as surely, not interesting to others. What I do know is that it is my blog, and although my time might be better spent walking my dog, doing my laundry, reading a book, or going to see a movie, it is what I want to do.***
This blog, although the biggest part of it currently, is still just one part of my greater Internet presence. The presentation is not all that impressive, I know, but I do not have the design skills that this guy***** has. I wish I did.
*The validity of my reasoning for doing so may not necessarily be shared by others.
**I do not want to be accused of taking liberties ala Maureen Dowd**** in deleting portions of text so as to change the meaning of the entry. The portion that was deleted was a short clause which tied this entry into the preceding dialogue. In my opinion, nothing was changed by omitting the clause, but retaining it would have accomplished nothing more than confusion in the current manner of usage.
***As I am currently single and live alone, the choice as to what I do with my free time is my own. Should this situation change, of course, I could possibly be pointed to better things to do with my free time.
****The designer and author of such site may be male or may be female. Does it matter? He/she says not.
*****This link is courtesy of Kathy Kinsley of On the Third Hand
One thing****** that does concern me, however, is not so much whether people agree with the points I attempt to make in my posts, but whether my writing style is obtuse, convoluted and confusing or smooth, literate and easily understood. Verbose is a given.
******I also wonder if the extensive footnoting is of assistance or is distractive?
Posted by Tiger at May 31, 2003 02:40 PM | TrackBackI actually appropriated the link to your post as part of a poorly constructed attempt to patronize Andy's generalized take on bloggers. I do find the mechanizations of commentors interesting, however, in this case that pseudo-study had more to do with creating filler for the post than a hard psychological look into the behavioral patterns of commentors.
Like I said, it was a poorly constructed attempt. My excuse was that at the time I wrote that post I had been awake for 20 hours and was not operating under my full mental faculties do to natural melatonin overdose.
Link hijacking. Hope you don't mind.
Posted by: AstreaEdge at May 31, 2003 03:39 PM