Half a dozen of the other
I was talking to someone recently about blogging and it became apparent that they just didn’t get it – they thought it was rather self-indulgent, as if to say why would anyone be interested in reading your diary on-line? Isn’t it a bit me me me? And i replied that yes, of course it is, but you’re missing the point. The blogging that I like, and the reason I still do it, is the sort that creates communities. We don’t blog in isolation – reading others’ blogs is as important as posting a few hundred words on the internet. There are some blogs I have been reading for over two years now, and it’s like reading the most fabulous never-ending book, one that you can interact with, and if you are lucky you can befriend the author too. Blogging is about sharing experiences, whether it’s culinary knowledge or interior design tips or potty-training a toddler or sharing the pain of grief. We learn from each other, and I realise that no one particularly cares about what i had for lunch today, but I hope that some of what I share here has maybe helped a soul out there, just as others have helped and inspired me too.
Don’t you find that non-bloggers can really get your back up when they try to poo-poo the whole thing? Moving along… I want to borrow a meme that Kristen posted recently.
{Go back through your archives and link to your five favorite posts.}
Link one: about la famiglia
Link two: about friends
Link three: about yourself
Link four: about something you love
Link five: your choice
honey as a reader of you for a good while now, it was a joy to take a walk down memory lane and re-read these posts, you picked good ones.
i for one don’t talk much with the ‘outside’ world about blogging because of the navel-gazing aspect and also, because they just don’t understand. one friend that knows about my blog (although she doesn’t regularly read), can’t get over the fact that people comment, ‘and so many people’ she had to add.
she didn’t understand that in many ways, these friends and commenters are closer to me than she is, that they get me in a way that she doesn’t and that i couldn’t imagine my life without it (blogging).
that said, i do need to keep a healthy perspective now and again, when i get too caught up in it all, but generally speaking, blogging has been a brilliant experience for me and i will continue to do so for as long as it continues to be that for me.
ok, enough for this novella. xoxo
Oh – I just had such a lovely wee time following those links and seeing what you chose. I especially love Mirror Mirror (if you see her today tell her that her friends also love her because she is brave and honest and generous) and the poem Nineteen. That’s going to stay with me all day.
Give our S-girl a big kiss for me?
xx
I do feel the same way and that may be why no one that I know, except my husband and one friend know that I have a blog.
I do love coming and looking at photos and art and hearing stories.
Hey you – love to you!! I agree about blogging. I’ve stopped telling people about where I met my dearest friends. NOn-bloggers think I am MAD. But I think it’s a rare gift to resonate with people and to find soul-sisters in this life. I count my lucky stars every day that I have this in my life!!
LOVE YOU!!!!
xo
P.S. Am in Bristol so I am thinking of you!! (I know – weird, but true! Had Wagamama, spent an hour at Borders – all I needed for the perfect day was YOU!!!)
xo
When I started blogging nearly three years ago, I made a pact with myself that I would tell no-one I knew in ‘real life’. I’ve met three bloggers, all of whom are now friends and via one of those bloggers (and with the help of Flickr), I met the man that I now live with. I still however do not tell people that I have a blog because, as you say, if they don’t, they just don’t get it.
I couldn’t agree more with your thoughts on blogging. I guess it’s not really possible to understand unless you experience blogging for yourself.
For a while I actually had a bit of a love/hate relationship with blogging, but over the past year I have realized the power of this community and found my tribe…I am, in fact, commenting on this blog from her flat in Bournemouth, having just arrived from LA, where we first met in person last year. And it was one of the most amazing weekends of my life.
I’ve had the same reaction from people who don’t blog. As a result, I don’t tell many people and even fewer have actually seen my blog.
Keeping a blog started out as a “safe” way to put my writing into the world. The last thing I expected to find was community. I’m still a little surprised by that wonderfulness. The image I have is of women circling to tell their stories. We just do it through technology. The feelings are the same.
Other people’s lunch ( breakfast, dinner, in between meals..) are interesting to me as well:>
And sigh, I have finally accepted that my unbloggy’ friends really won’t get it…why I do what I do…I know they think I’m rather self indulgent and maybe vain…( I showed them a picture of me in my blog once and they laughed at the idea that I took a picture of myself..like duuuh’…)
Sometimes…..a lot of times I actually feel closer to a somebody a gazzilion miles away…
Yes, I’ve had a couple responses that I think are based in fear. The fear of predators. For the most part, though, I’ve had really good responses from nonbloggers who are genuinely curious of the whole blogging world. It’s still catching on, this blogging thing. I think most people really do want to connect to others around the world, to share our views, our thoughts.
Have fun with your visiting friend, Susannah! Well, of course you will!
You know what? As a writer who’s not a blogger, I think the same questions can be asked about any sort of writing. Why write at all? Who would want to read what I write? Isn’t it all a bit me me me?
The answer, of course, in both the on- and off-line writing worlds, is that we write because it’s necessary in order for us to be whole, well people. Sure, there’s navel gazing out there–but for sure *that’s* not limited to the blogging world. People are willing to accept non-blog forms of published writing as legitimate because they have a long history of legitimacy, but they’re really not that different from blogging.
The very best bloggers are doing way more than navel gazing–even when their writing is deeply personal. And you only need to look around a bit to find similar sorts of deeply personal writing being done in the non-blog world. In fact, it’s become something of a creative nonfiction revolution out there, and I’ve always thought blogging fit right in.
Also, while I certainly understand that blogging creates a more immediate and certainly more expansive community, my experience has been that anyone with a serious writing (or other artistic) practice will eventually draw other writers (artists) to them. It may take longer to build up a real community, but it happens.
Yes I find that non-bloggers can really get my back up about this! Next time it happens I think I’ll refer them to this post!… because it couldn’t have been expressed any better. Love to you, Vx
couldn’t agree with you more. you said it all so beautifully. thank you.
These are the best words about the experience of blogging, Sus. Right on point. And yes, it is funny how people just don’t get it.
I am taking a little break right now, but I still couldn’t imagine not having it, and not having my friends here.
((hugs))
:)
yes yes!
I loved this, even referenced it on my blog.
and by the way, I do (read in italics) care what you had for lunch today.
thanks for letting me be a part of your little community.
yes i completely agree!! in blogging i was able to find friends who share the love of writing and poetry and photography. i don’t really find that in the friends i hang out with. i bet they do secretly think it’s just a way to show off or talk about yourself but we know that its not about that. it was about reaching out and finding like-minded souls and i feel so blessed for having done so.
and i love that reflection photograph!! have fun in London!
found you again. i can’t remember how to update my links since i use live writer so i have been slipping to my old blogs and going down those links and here you are. i started reading you when i began blogging a couple of years ago. i’m glad to be part of such a unique group who share their lives (or the parts they wish to share) online.
take care and i will be back.
poet.