if only everyone…
I’ve spent hours in the past week telling two professors and a few fellow students all about blogs - so many topics of conversation open up to blogging eventually. *wave to Dr. Mussey* Because I’ve been reading and/or writing blog-ese for four years, it’s always wild to talk to someone who still has no clue what they are. Most have heard of weblogs, but have some distorted notion. For instance, the Soc. professor I chatted with asked hesitantly, “Aren’t blogs those diaries on the web where teenagers write about what they had for breakfast?” Every professor I share blogging with seems fascinated by the breadth and scope of all that writing ordinary people are doing and see the value in the myriad of perspectives one can gain from reading blogs.
When I started this site in mid-2001, no one I knew personally kept a weblog. In 2002 a favorite Soc. professor of mine came on board, then a some friends, Kari-Ann (whom I’ve known since we were 11), Hobbs, and Jeremy, started via my prompting. Some, like Harmony prefer to be called journalers. These days a few people I connect with already have blogs (Marie, Cedric, Sara, and Monica, e.g.). I wish more people I knew had blogs, however. It would be great to meet someone and be able to swap blog URLs as easily as e-mail addresses and have an easy way to keep in touch. For those cool people I meet (all the time) who I’m not necessarily close enough to go to lunch with or correspond reguarly with via e-mail, reading and commenting on each other’s blogs would be the perfect way to go. Then there are other friends who are brilliant and who I feel could grace us with some incredible blogs (hint, hint Pamela).
Interestingly, I would say about 80% of the readers here are people I do not know face-to-face. Very few people who know me read this. Even my mom, who loves reading my writing has read maybe three entries ever (she has to use the computer at the library to go online). The rest of my family doesn’t know this site at all, and neither do any of my co-workers (except the other office radical).
birty said,
November 24, 2004 @ 2:49 pm
I’ve thought that it would be cool if lots more people blogged. I think I’d get to know them so much better, but maybe not.
My favorite part of your post is the end, where you discuss your mother, and how rarely she’s read your site. I identify with that.
This is not my first weblog. My father has known about all of them, as has my mother. My friends have known about most or all of them as well.
Either I am and extremely boring writer, or it is too painful for them (especially dad) to confirm their suspicions that ther son/friend is quite the radical. They’re conservative and probably pretty surprised to see how out there I can be.
Or maybe they have more exciting lives than I do, and they don’t have the time to sit around and read my boring thoughts all day.
Ah well.
I enjoy it, and I enjoy your weblog as well.