I laughed out loud when I heard that Donald Trump quit his blog because no one was reading it. As someone who has been tapping out and publishing blog posts for — eep! — 13 years or so, I would have been happy to predict (for free!) just such an outcome for Trump and his marketing team. A blog is old-school. It’s of the past. That’s probably why I like it so much! It’s like a dream journal, but with an option to press publish. It feels both personal and anonymous (maybe that’s a bit of fiction I use to allow myself to keep posting, but that’s honestly how it feels). Connections are made that seem random and serendipitous.
Other tech platforms have replaced blogs, but so far I haven’t felt compelled to move from this medium that’s as comfortable now as a worn-in pair of jeans. I see creative people posting videos of themselves journaling out loud on Instagram, or streaming on YouTube, and of course TikTok provides a dynamic platform that seems to vault some into viral sensations, something no blog could ever do. Those are visual and aural mediums, where personalities and characters can make a sharp, quick impact on the senses; and a blog is mostly composed of the written word. Of course, the blog has also been largely replaced by the subscriber-based newsletter. And the Instagram feed provides a platform for mini-posts that feel quite blog-like: photo + words.
Where am I going with this rambling reflection on digital communications? Maybe I’m trying to figure out what this blog means to me, and why I keep returning, when other, more popular self-publishing platforms exist. I think I come back because it feels easy. The pace is calm, based purely on my interests and time in any given week. There’s no expectation that something needs to be published on Friday morning, or Sunday night; no endless stream to keep feeding, to try to be seen, noticed, liked. It’s just me and this comforting box on the screen, into which I’ve been typing words for many years.
It doesn’t feel like I’m “creating content” here.
I’m just being me, in the comforting ways that this medium allows me appear.
I would appear as someone different, somewhere else, at least a little bit, and while that could be just fine, and maybe I will experiment and grow into different ways of presenting myself, I like the me that gets to be here, at least for now.
More later …
xo, Carrie
PS Do you blog? If so, tell me why in the comments and please link to your blog.
Carrie, as a fellow longtime blogger, I could not agree more. We are women of words. We process life through writing. The thought of jabbering into my cellphone camera would no more occur to me than … running at dawn, which seems, for some strange reason, to be something you do. I have decided to give up any attempt to be whatever the tech of the moment requires. I’m never going to have 400,00 IG followers or whatever you’re supposed to have for publishers to approve of you. I try to write well and will make money in other ways so I can keep writing what I write. If few read me because they don’t know I’m out here, that makes me sad, but the books exist, the blog exists, they are my offering to the world. I do what I can. And so do you, and it’s a lot.
I share your feelings about blogs being dream journals and yes, we can press publish but the readership isn’t going to be huge, or at least not for mine! But like you, I could have predicted that the former President wouldn’t stick with it. Writing matters! Style matters! Grammar! Even following an idea from its genesis to something resembling a conclusion! People don’t come to blogs to read baffle-gab, or maybe they do, but I can’t imagine anything more soul-destroying that clicking on a blog “written” by Donald Trump. Or wait. Maybe I can think of something worse. 4 years of him leading his country into chaos and terror.
Been blogging for 15 years plus…and love the ease and space of it…knowing that even a few folks are reading sure does feel good, especially on those days when my confidence is in the bell jar. And I read all your posts! Even though I don’t always respond…this fellow writer is reading! So keep ’em coming! And thank you!
http://www.vanessashields.com…this year I’m writing a poem a day. Today’s was 162!
*whoops…the link took the wrong words!
my blog is:
http://www.vanessashields.com
thanks!
v
I forget what podcast I was listening to, but the host was discussing Donald’s failed blog, and said, “Well, Donald, blogging’s not for everyone.” And it’s true! But for those of us for whom it’s taken, blogging is a hard habit to shake.
I am a newbie for blogging. I do it for work when I have extra time. I am enjoying it. Here is my first one: https://wherecommunityconnects.wordpress.com/2020/11/03/writing-is-therapeutic/
When I wrote it, I haven’t discovered The X Page workshop yet, nor Lynda Barry, or I would have suggested it there!!!
Maybe in a new blog post??