Learning to Blog

I was talk­ing to the Spousal Unit about learn­ing to blog today.  He chal­lenged me to write some­thing that really “put myself out there” and not be so safe.  I’ll try to not be so uptight this go round.

Every post I’ve made so far has been a learn­ing process.  I didn’t expect there to be this steep a learn­ing curve in just writ­ing about stuff that inter­ests me. I thought I’d just give myself writ­ing assign­ments, put myself out there, and get used to writ­ing again. My computer-fu isn’t what it was back when I was in high school, rock­ing it on my Amiga and look­ing down my nose at every­one else. Still, I’m not stum­bling blindly for­ward.   If I mess up, there’s a whole web just wait­ing to help redi­rect me.  

Blog post­ing is an entirely dif­fer­ent writ­ing process than email or term papers or short sto­ries. I don’t require myself to out­line all of my thoughts, main sen­tence and sup­port­ing sen­tence, para­graph by para­graph. This actu­ally slows me down. Even small posts are tak­ing far more edits than I like, so con­se­quently I’ve been post­ing in the evenings so that I’m not dis­tracted by munchkins while I’m proofreading.

In these three weeks, I’ve changed how I look at the web.  The Blo­gos­phere has a strange com­plex intel­lect of its own.  While I’ve read a few blogs con­sis­tently, I find myself surf­ing for more, com­ment­ing more, read­ing news aggre­gates, actu­ally spend­ing time on Twit­ter or Face­book, and sud­denly spend­ing a good half my day on the net.  My “Read It Later” book­mark folder is get­ting ridicu­lously fat.  I start to write a post and find myself check­ing a dozen blogs to make sure every­one in the world isn’t blog­ging it first. It’s sim­i­lar to being at a party where peo­ple are min­gling here and there. In those sit­u­a­tions, I tend to try to keep my head down, get­ting my point across as suc­cinctly as pos­si­ble with­out draw­ing undue atten­tion to myself, espe­cially in a crowd. The inter­net is the largest crowd I’ve ever been in, but I want to share ideas and thoughts, and be a part of the con­scious­ness that exists out here. It seems every­where I turn, every­one has the same idea on their mind at the same time.  How do I be a unique part of the con­ver­sa­tion with­out regur­gi­tat­ing what every­one else is saying? 

So far I’m hav­ing a crazy amount of fun, even if I haven’t fig­ured out where I’m going yet. I’m try­ing like hell to fig­ure out how to be myself and just say stuff, but some­times it’s harder than others! I’ve got all man­ner of dis­trac­tions in my daily life, and a lack of tech­ni­cal knowl­edge, and what the hell am I doing out here any­way? I feel all stiff and for­mal at times, and right now I’m sec­ond guess­ing myself that I’ve got­ten too per­sonal.  Can you do that on a blog?  I sup­pose if I break the bound­aries I’ve set for myself, then I can, but I want the read­ers to know me for me.  Red Chief goes to kinder­garten next year, and I want to make some direc­tional changes in my life when that hap­pens.  This was the begin­ning of that exper­i­ment.  Just using the blog­ging as an excuse to learn more in and of itself is already help­ing me.  Jump­ing from place to place, web­surf­ing like I haven’t done since the net was a brand new toy, fid­dling with ideas, writ­ing, strength­en­ing rela­tion­ships, rein­forc­ing who I am and what I’m inter­ested in –it all feels very nat­ural to me, that I’m stretch­ing my bound­aries in the right direction. 

How do other peo­ple find their rhythm, whether as a blog­gers, or with sim­i­lar hob­bies? Does time work it out? Am I think­ing too much?