There’s been some speculation out there, wondering whether blogs are dying. They’re so 2010. Maybe it’s just mid-January slump. I know THIS blog isn’t dying. It’s too important to die and it’s going nowhere unless I do, and I have no plans to disappear. It’s been awhile since the question of why I blog has been raised, though the answers remain the same.
Important, you say? How could this blog be important?! What cheek! Yes, indeed: it IS important. What I’ve gained from this online journal, this interwebby rambling, this obiter dictum, is immeasurable. Friends, family, community, posterity; a place to muse and vent and invent. A blank slate for thoughts, for jokes, for stories, for anecdotes…scribbles and histories and conversations. For delving into what makes me ME and what connects that me to YOU.
But like daily field notes concludes: blogging is alive and well. Oh sure, it goes through ups and downs and individual bloggers and writers and photographers may take a break here and there, or let their ambivalence get the best of them for awhile, but something about it draws you back. Whether you journal with a physical implement clutched between your fingers, scratching out runes of wonder on a thin sheet of tree, or clickity clack your nails over a couple of rows of impressionable buttons, your words are thrown out there. The nice thing about blogging is that someone is reading. Usually, several someones. Who doesn’t like an audience? Who doesn’t appreciate encouragement and feedback and most of all, acknowledgment? Is there anything more viscerally satisfying than having our words and thoughts and creations noticed and smiled upon?
Well, maybe having your back scratched. Or that perfect shake maki with juuuust the right amount of wasabi. Or the fierce hug of a friend you haven’t seen in a really long time. Or the last page of a book that you couldn’t put down, that you didn’t want to end and whose last few pages wrapped things up so PERFECTLY that you can’t but wish you could write like that.
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The other day, my husband made the observation that due to the lateness of Easter this year, we have SIXTEEN weeks before we get another paid holiday (without actually taking a vacation day). After the glut of the holiday season with the last gasp of Epiphany thrown in (here in Sweden, anyway), SIXTEEN weeks seems like an eternity. That’s FOUR MONTHS! Of 5-day work weeks. The kids, of course, have sportlov at the end of February, but we poor working schmoes just have to slog it out ’til the end of April. GAH.
*Title from a quote by Nadine Gordimer