A week ago Rachel Barenblat, AKA
The Velveteen Rabbi, invited a few long-term bloggers, including me, to participate in a celebration of at least 15 years of blogging and to answer the question:
Why the hell am I still blogging?
As a result, a few of us who, via our blogs, became offline as well as online friends, opened a joint document to share our thoughts and agreed to post the conversation simultaneously on our blogs.
Here are excerpts from our discussion, jointly blogged here and at:
Velveteen Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
Via Negativa Dave Bonta
Hoarded Ordinaries Lorianne DiSabato
mole Dale Favier
the cassandra pages Beth Adams
Rachel:
Writing is one of the fundamental ways I experience and explore the
world, both the external world and my own internal world. I think it was
EM Forster who wrote, “How do I know what I think until I see what I
say?” Blogging as I’ve come to understand it is living one’s life in the
open, with spiritual authenticity and intellectual curiosity, ideally
in conversation or relationship with others who are doing the same.
Dave: At
some level, it’s easier to keep blogging at Via Negativa, the Morning
Porch, and Moving Poems than it is to stop. Basically I’m an addict.
Writing poetry is fun for me — entering that meditative head-space
required for immersion in writing. As for the social aspect, I’ve been
in, or on the periphery of, several distinct blogging communities over
the years, and at one time, we all commented on each other’s sites, but
with the rise of social media, most blog commenting went away — and I’m
not entirely sure that’s a bad thing. Writing and responding to comments
did take up a lot of my time ten years ago, and now that I can scratch
that conversational itch on Twitter, or in real life with my partner,
I’m OK with most interactions on my blogs being limited to pings. But I
must immediately qualify that and admit that Via Negativa is a special
case, because for well over half its existence now I’ve enjoyed the
virtual companionship of a co-blogger, the brilliant and prolific poet
Luisa Igloria, and a small number of occasional guest bloggers as well. I
wouldn’t say I’m competitive, but Luisa’s commitment to a daily poetry
practice has definitely forced me to up my game. Then there’s Mr. Pepys.
My Pepys Diary erasure project grew directly from sociability: my
partner and I wanted to read the online version of the diary together,
and I worried I might eventually get bored with it if I weren’t mining
it for blog fodder.
Lorianne: I
am not attached to the medium, but I am attached to the message, and
the process of creating/sharing that message. There has been a lot of
hand-wringing among bloggers over the “death of the blog,” with
long-time (and former) bloggers worried about attention divides between
blogs and social media. Where do “I” live if I post in multiple places:
on blog, in a paper notebook, on social media? For those of us who do
all three, the result can be confusing, distracting, and frazzling…or it
can be creative, collaborative, and synergistic.
Dale: I
didn’t really expect ever to have readers, so in a way, having
readership dwindle is a return to the early days… I’ve outlived some of
my personas — I’m no longer recognizeably very Buddhist, and my politics
have morphed in some odd ways. I don’t think I’m as salable an item as I
used to be :-) But the inertia, as Dave said. When I do have something
to say and my censor doesn’t step in, the blog is still where I go. It’s
been home for fifteen years: my strand of the web… The community that
was established way back when is still important to me, and still a
large part of my life. And there’s still a lot of value in having a
public space. The act of making something public changes it, changes how
I look at. I become the viewers and the potential viewers. It helps me
get out of myself. It helps me work through my favorite game of “what if
I’m wrong about all these things?”
Beth: I
think a lot of it has to do with a sense of place. My blog is like a
garden or a living room that I’ve put energy and thought and care into
as a place that’s a reflection of myself and is hopefully welcoming for
others.. The discipline of gathering work and talking about it
coherently has been extremely good for me and for my art practice. And
I’ve also really appreciated and been inspired by other people who do
the same, whatever their means of expression. There’s something deeply
meaningful about following someone’s body of work, and their struggles,
over not just months but years. In today’s climate of too-muchness and
attention-seeking and short attention spans, I feel so encouraged and
supported by the quiet, serious doggedness of other people like me!
Natalie: Why
the hell still blogging? Not sure I am still blogging. I put something
up on Facebook whenever I feel like saying hey, listen, or hey, look at
this. Then I copy/paste the post to Blogger where I keep Blaugustine
going, mainly out of a sense of imaginary duty. The idea that there are
some real people out there who may be actually interested in some of my
thoughts and/or artwork is undoubtedly attractive, even necessary. I
live a mostly hermit life and don’t get much feedback of any kind. But
my interior life is very active, all the time, and having a tiny public
platform online where I can put stuff is really helpful. To be perfectly
honest I think that’s about it for me and blogging at present. I don’t
do any other social media, it would all take too much time which I’d
rather devote to artwork.
