As I sit here in study hall (we're in the Commons Area today, its a refreshing change from the auditorium), I'm struggling internally with what to blog about, how to blog, and why I even feel the need to blog today, right now. It's just one of those questioning days, probably borne from my half awakeness and my body struggling to recover from my emotional high at the Region Swim meet this weekend. Who knows? I certainly don't.
Question One: What do I blog about?
This question arises quite a lot, especially as my creative, one word, attention grabbing blog title ideas dry up. I feel as if I've evolved as a blogger throughout this semester, and a little bit, of serious blogging for a grade. In the beginning I would try to be funny while being deep. I think I probably got there with a few of my blogs. Then I switched to trying to take a single word or idea and trying to attach a deeper meaning, kind of like English teachers do with that random symbol in a supposedly important book. That was fun, and it definitely encouraged my thinking, but soon that too ceased to bring me satisfaction that I had done a good job. And now I'm at the place where ideas to blog about are slowly drying up, I no longer have a definite idea about what I want to blog about. It's not as if I don't have enough in my life to blog about, or enough opinions on current issues, or any of that...I just don't have that something that made it easy in the beginning to come up with ideas. So I'm constantly faced with the question, What do I blog about?
Question Two: How should I blog?
This is a big one. I want to know what people want to read, I want to know what they would enjoy, I don't want to disappoint my hordes (11) of readers. Do they want something funny? Do they want to find some deeper meaning about something? Do they want to read my thoughts on some random idea? What do they want and how do I give them what they want? I want people to visit my blog and I want them to come away with something. Whether that something was a laugh when they were having a bad day, or just a new way of looking a some random, seemingly unimportant idea. I want to have done something for someone. How should I blog? How do I reach who I want to reach? How do I know that I have done what I wanted to do?
Question Three: Why do I feel the need to blog?
Is it because I know at the end of the month there is a 30 point grade for my blogs? Is it because I just saw something that I find repulsive, or funny, or horrendous, or ridiculous, or life changing? What motivates me to blog? Why do I continue to visit this site to type my thoughts for people to read? I don't see the point (outside of the whole grade thing) of blogging. I mean honestly who cares? Why would anyone want to read what someone else thinks? What difference does it make? Blogging is almost completely useless. Self-expression. That's the answer to the question raised above. The need to get myself out there and have people know what I think. We all need a place to go where we can rant, rage, comment, note, or whatever about how we feel. We, living in this society today, are fortunate enough to have many different outlets for these feelings. We have so many ways to get our thoughts out there and shown for everyone to see. That's why I blog, I need to get my thoughts out of my head, I need to express myself electronically.
As I sit here in study hall, in the refreshingly new environment of the Commons Area, I feel a little better. My internal struggles have been expressed and thought out. Blogging is like having an internal conversation with yourself, while also talking to hundreds of people. It lets you sift through your thoughts, it allows you to examine them for yourself without the filter of other people. You can get it all out there, and then people can comment on it and supply their own thoughts to yours. Its therapeutic.
And so we go.
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