I’m posting this before the panel discussion over at CTV-Ottawa this morning.
I figured there might be a bunch of people heading over here to check out what this website is all about. And I wanted to summarize a little bit, you know, in case I pass out in the middle of the interview and/or cannot actually string words together and make them sound like they mean something and make sense.
So, what is this thing?
Well, a blog is essentially a website. It’s like a journal, in that the entries are posted in chronological order and are updated regularly. Blogs can feature text, photos, videos, audio… any media. Blogs can be about many different things. For me, it’s personal. I write a lot about what I do, my children, the things we create and the adventures we have together.
There are many different blogs, millions in fact, written about every topic you can possibly imagine. There are blogs about politics, fashion, film, photography, cooking, knitting, technology… you name it, someone is writing about it. The very viral nature of the blog has made it very appealing to marketing and PR executives.
I am excited to see how it’s changing the mainstream media and communication of ideas.
But for me, this place is where I spill the contents of my brain. Not all of it mind you, you must realize there are some things I keep to myself, but a lot of who I am comes out in the stories I share with you.
I remember having a conversation with a friend, who was describing how she explained my blog to a relative of hers. I’m paraphrasing here…
“It’s like a diary, it’s fun to read,” she said
“Okay, so what does she write about?” he asked.
“Oh, everyday stuff. And her kids.”
“But why would you want to read it?”
Why indeed?
Well, what’s a newspaper columnist? It’s a person who uses their space to share their opinions with their readership. One of my favourite columnists is Christie Blatchford. She’s such an amazing writer, she can make anything sound interesting; stories about her parents, her dog… her observations are keen and I often find myself snorting with laughter. I love her style.
The same generally holds true with the blogs I read. The advantage of the blog over the newspaper column is that readers have the ability to post their own comments and reactions to any written piece, whereas the print media offers up some information and for the most part it stops there.
The other bonus about blogs is the hyperlink. Linking to other online resources – whether they are text, audio or video – adds scope to the discussion like no traditional media can.
Why read blogs? Because there are a lot of great unpublished writers out there.
The beauty of the blog is that it gives people the opportunity to publish their thoughts to a wide audience without having to know any programming. But blogging is more than reading and writing, it’s about community.
That’s what it has become for me. My space. My community.
I started keeping an online journal when my older daughter was born. This is where my website programming skills came in handy, because it was before the age of Blogger, Typepad and other blog publishing platforms. My blog was ultimately all about the baby (a friend once called it “a shrine” but that’s ok, that’s what it was). I initially used it as a communications tool. As a new parent, it was easier to update the blog with info at odd hours than to talk on the phone or write umpteen emails. And at least this way I wasn’t foisting baby photos on people who weren’t really interested. :)
Little by little it became more about me. Perhaps it coincided with a need to find myself, to better define who I was and where I was going. I think this is a common issue for new moms who are spending every waking hour (and many non-waking ones) feeding, changing and soothing their babies. All they want to do is get out of the house, or at the very least, communicate with other women who feel like horrible sleep-deprived milk machines.
There’s a lot to be said about shared experience.
Are you familiar with a book called “The Artist’s Way”? It was highly recommended to me. It’s a self-help book that’s supposed to help people give their creativity a boost.
It wasn’t my kind of book, but there was one idea that was intriguing: morning pages. The idea was to get up in the morning and write (was it five?) pages of stream-of-consciousness style writing. Whatever was on your mind you were to dump it on the paper.
I really liked this idea. And although I abandoned it after about a week, it had an effect on the way I write. This is how I write my posts here on the blog. I sit. I spill. And if you’re reading along, getting a laugh, or discovering something new or making a positive connection on any level, well, that makes me happy.
Are you a new visitor? I would love it if you took a moment to click on the “comments” link below and said hello. :)
