Sunday, November 30, 2008

What is a blog?

Well, I jumped into this feet first, figuring I would learn as I go. I learned a little more the other day when I had the chance to talk about it a little with JC and PC. JC is the first person who ever said the word "blog" to me. I had to ask her what it was. Then later, when PC started coming to Los Angeles to be with JC and finally moved here, I got to know him a little more quickly by following his blog. I keep tabs on JS in Chicago through her blog, though she hasn't posted much lately. The blogs I read most by people I don't know are The Sartorialist and Bitten. I also look at Modern Art Notes pretty often. For quite a while, I looked Theresa Duncan's blog Wit of the Staircase every day. (It was really hard for me to go there right now in order to copy the URL into this post. I didn't know her very well, but it's still hard to accept her death.) All of these blogs are really different. I've been trying to figure out what a blog really is, and the variety doesn't make it easy to answer this question. Some people are really specific about a theme or topic, some use blogs as daily diaries or logs, some use them as a way to disseminate their work, ideas, and projects, some to advance their knowledge. Some blogs are personal, some academic, journalistic, etc. Some are abstract and some straightforward. I think reading TD's blog is the first time I thought I might like to have one of my own. It was filled with mystery and humor and cool stuff, just like her. In the end, I think that's the thing: Blogs can be self-portraits of their writers that evolve over time. I like that LM and I started our blogs around the same time, since we talk over things like this quite often. I will continue to think through the ways in which I may approach using a blog and just keep posting stuff and changing things around until I think it looks like me...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love that a blog can be whatever you want it to be. It can assume a shape/focus or not, change shape/focus or not. I only wish it had a nicer name than "blog"!

Somehow, I imagine it fills the void that letter-writing traditionally did -- a space for reflection as much as an act of communication. (Email is decidedly **not** good for this.)

I have your blog on my Google Reader list, so I get to see whenever you post something new...like today. Thanks so much.

Corrina Peipon said...

Hi LM - I think I fall in the same group as you do, of people who imagine a blog as an open space, make up the rules as you go along kind of thing... There are others, for sure, who see blogs as having a more evolved set of universally accepted conventions. I like your analogy with letter writing. I agree that blogs do serve both needs for reflection and communication. Since blogs are inherently more public than personal letters, there is clearly another dimension to blogging that is, I think, still undefined. I think I'll make another post about this soon... xo, CP.