Is blogging still relevant?
A few weeks ago, Darren Tay of Social Media Breakfast in Singapore asked: Are blogs still relevant?
Like many others, when I am swamped with another project, my blogging suffers. More than most activities, 90% of success in blogging is showing up. Indeed, blogging technology rewards showing up.
A blog is less an act of writing and more a particular web format that allows easy updating. More than that, Google ranks new material more highly than old and helps us find an audience, provided we show up.
Why sometimes I stop blogging
Nonetheless, sometimes I don’t show up.
At first I thought I had no time. But when you are used to blogging, it takes little time.
Then I thought that other projects that require writing compete for the same psychological energy.
Hmm, I wonder about that too. Writing for a blog is more carefree and energizing than most writing. Well, possibly that is the reason. Much professional writing sucks the life and soul out of you (and your readers).
Another possibility is that there are whole swathes of the UK who only know vaguely what a blog is. They certainly don’t understand the technical point that a blog is just easy to update.
They don’t use RSS feeds and they don’t know what a feed reader is.
Broadband is wasted on the rich
Those who are uneducated about the internet are not the indigent or poor either. People who don’t understand blogging have broadband. They just don’t use it. We might argue that the government has wasted a lot of money giving broadband to people who are never likely ever to use it.
These are people who live in institutions. They get up and tread the same path every day. They talk to the same people. And they watch the same TV programmes. They are paid a lot of money to ignore the rest of the world.
They do bump into the real world sometimes. They experience serendipity occasionally but so infrequently they actually remember! Despite being moneyed members of the chattering classes, they have never heard of TED.
Blogging and institutionalized life: never the twain shall meet
I think that’s why I stop blogging. I get sucked into that world.
I’ve always known that I have a poor kinesthetic memory. When I step off a plane in Instanbul, or Nairobi or Singapore, I always blink and exclaim “It’s light!”. I can remember that I will be surprised, but living in UK, I forget what it feels like to be in bright sunlight.
When I am fumbling my way through old institutions and groping around their murkier unswept cobwebby corners, I remember there are blogs. But the feeling of blogging recedes.
Maybe that’s why we stop blogging. We’ve gone through Platform Nine and Three Quarters and we are in Muggles world.
Well, I’ve come back the other way. Let’s see how long I can stay.
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