The obligatory blog about blogging
As I have been blogging more regularly (there was a 6+ month hiatus), and following other blogs (a brand new thing for me over the past month or two), I've been noticing the different ways in which people present (or obfuscate) their identities online. The inspiration for this came a week or so ago, when Tommyspoon mentioned that there wasn't anything he felt like blogging about. TeacherRefPoet expressed immediate concern, and my first response was to think that was strange. The idea that a person wouldn't pick and choose what to write about had not really occurred to me, and I wouldn't have dreamed that "not feeling like globally publishing the goings-on in my life" might be the equivalent of "life is going badly." (Not meaning to pick on you, TRP - just found myself caught in a different mindset.)
Of course, there are different styles of blogging. Joe and Ben almost always post in long essay formats on a specific topic. Occasionally they are rant-ish, but mostly they read like newspaper editorials. Swankette and Victoria tend to post in smaller bits about whatever strikes them at the moment. Hugh and I fall somewhere in the middle. More people than I care to count include nothing in their blogs but links to other blogs, which has always given me a headache. Others purport to be straight journals of the blogger's life; some succeed in capturing both the ups and downs, some are probably interesting if you already know the author, but kinda boring otherwise, and still others are whinefests that make it sound like their owners have not had a good day since 1974.
There are different levels of obfuscation, too. Joe is careful never to refer to the place he works by name (although if you did your homework carefully enough you'd figure it out), and Hugh is diligent about never mentioning the names of his wife or two daughters. TeacherRefPoet and Lemming are both very careful to not use their real names. On the other hand, TeacherRefPoet is open about the fact that he is engaged to Swankette, who, although she uses a nickname, includes her real first name, photo, and location on her blog.
Honestly, it had never occurred to me not to include my real name. I also include links to both where I live and where I work. That said, I am also very careful not to write anything that I wouldn't feel comfortable projected from one of the light-up billboards on Times Square.
So, here's the question of the day, part one: for those of you who blog, how do you think of your site? Is it a personal journal into which outsiders peer? Is it more akin to a newspaper column? How much does your writing rely on having a specific readership?
Part two is: given your druthers, what sort of blog do you prefer reading?
garden progress: It's been raining, which is a good thing all around.
house progress: Joe primed more of the upstairs hallway while I was in Maryland!Yay!
what's for dinner? Cookout at a friend's house. We'll probably be stopping by Lannings on the way for something to throw on the grill.
posted by Alison @ 3:46 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
-
At 12:59 AM,
Swankette held forth...
- Actually, I list a former location that is very near the current location (Once I moved in with TRP the location changed)
In answer to your questions:
1. The wedding blog is a personal journal for me to vent on, to help from getting overwhelmed by it all. The personal blog is my own personal soapbox. I don't think I have a readership, so that doesn't concern me much.
2. I prefer the personal journal variety blog (when the personalities are worth reading about at least). I can get the news from newspapers, radio and the internet, so don't need to read it on the blog as well. -
At 8:48 AM,
tommyspoon held forth...
- Just to clarify matters: I have plenty of family-related topics I could blog about but choose not to. There are certain areas of my life which are not for public consumption, period. This line actually makes my job easier because I have to choose more interesting topics to write about while keeping some boundaries in place.
1. "Exit, pursued by a bear" is made up of the flotsam and jetsam floating around in my head that I think others may find just as interesting. It may turn into something more than that, or into something entirely different. Who knows?
2. Any blog that interests me and is written well. -
At 5:45 PM,
Joe held forth...
- I think Patrick Hughes sums it all up.
-
At 8:26 PM,
TeacherRefPoet held forth...
- In no particular order...
--I sensed something in Tommyspoon's tone that indicated something was awry...and further investigation revealed that something was. So it's not the I-don't-want-to-blog that was wrong, but something about the way he said it.
--The only reason I withhold my name and any identifiable information is I want to delay the inevitable day that students discover my blog. I like using bad words every now and then, or acknowledging that sex exists, and I'm not thrilled doing that when kids are present. My kids, anyway.
--Of course, I'm not an idiot. Anybody is a click or two from figuring out who I am. And common sense would go far, anyway. I don't reveal where I live officially, but blog about my hometown often enough that anyone can figure it out. And how many teacher/ref/poets are there anyway? Still, I'd like to keep it student-free for as long as possible.
In answer to your questions...
1. Whatever is on my mind, basically. I blogged a lot about last year's election, not because of any desire to change the world, but because it's what I was thinking about all the time. I blogged about ballgames I reffed last season a good deal, in part because people seemed to like reading them (thanks to a link from Jack Bog, my adventure of T-ing up a coach got more hits than any other posting I've ever made), but mostly to straighten things out in my mind. I guess I just kinda like writing. It falls into the realm of "personal (but not too personal) journal into which others may peer, which occasionally will include a longer essay on some shit I've noticed."
2. Good writing. Period. -
At 3:07 PM,
Alison held forth...
- TRP - I certainly never meant to imply that you were an idiot, only that we have vastly differing attitudes about what is off-limits and what is not. Obviously, being teachers, you and Lemming are in a totally different situation from me (although it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if my boss had somehow run across this post and discovered I was planning to leave my job).
I have just found the "no real names on the web" phenomenon more of a hinderance than anything else. It's part of why it took me so long to come back to blogging - as far as I knew, Hugh was the only person I knew with a blog, and I don't so much care about the day-to-day lives of anonymous strangers. I would check out Hugh's blog semi-regularly, along with TRP's other web page, and that was about it. After Joe started his blog, he actually had to go through his blogroll with me a person at a time and say "no - you know this person, it's really X." To this day, I have no clue how he figured out who you all were.