I\u2019m curious about the function that blogging serves for you. The blog is such an interesting, borderland genre. (And I will candidly admit here that the bulk of my personal experience with blogs and blogging has turned on a certain motherly voyeurism of my very verbal, bright, and prolific son.) A really great blog can read, it seems, like a well-honed, mini essay. A continuing interchange can take on the shape and the heat of a spirited conversation, or an argument. I\u2019m often impressed with the quality of the writing and thinking I see. (And sometimes, of course, blogging is far less than this.) Also there\u2019s a continuing quality to a blog that is closer to a journal or diary, or soap opera, as it charts the ins and outs of personal and communal experiences.
\n
\nThe energy I see Nate expending on his blogging comes closest, I suspect, to energy that I expended in my twenties and thirties on journal writing. I know the value of journal writing to history. I also understand what I think of sometimes as the underside of journaling. Wondering what the parallels might be with the blog. <\/p>\n
The earliest journal I have dates back to the fifth grade. I became a serious journal keeper when I went away to college. I have boxes full of notebooks and endless files on my computer filled with personal ruminations. The longer I keep a journal, the more it bores and annoys me. I\u2019ve tried multiple times in my life to kill it off. I\u2019m in one of those phases of the moon now. I know how a wonderful diary reads. And mine is no wonderful diary. For me journal writing has always been a coping tool. I write when I\u2019m sad or angry or frustrated. A sad, angry, frustrated person is a repetitious, boring person\u2014these emotions send me, at least, round and round in circles. I work my way forward inch by inch through an endless round of repeitition. Since I\u2019m basically a rather optimistic, bouyant person, it\u2019s painful to encounter myself in these pages. The disclosures in these pages mask, obliterate much of what matters to me looking back. <\/p>\n
And I sometimes wonder what I could have done if that writing energy had been channeled in a different direction. Maybe my son trods a better way. . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m curious about the function that blogging serves for you. The blog is such an interesting, borderland genre. (And I will candidly admit here that the bulk of my personal experience with blogs and blogging has turned on a certain motherly voyeurism of my very verbal, bright, and prolific son.) A really great blog can read, it seems, like a well-honed, mini essay. A continuing interchange can take on the shape and the heat of a spirited conversation, or an argument. I\u2019m often impressed with the quality of the writing and thinking I see. (And sometimes, of course, blogging is far less than this.) Also there\u2019s a continuing quality to a blog that is closer to a journal or diary, or soap opera, as it charts the ins and outs of personal and communal experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloggernacle","tag-around-the-blogs"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5773,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/5773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}