Is a Daily Blog That? A Daily?
My adventure in blogging began January 2006. I saw it and have until recently as an exercise in daily writing.
Some years ago I interviewed and photographed novelist James Ellroy in Seattle. He told me that sometimes all he did in the morning was to look at what he had written the day before. He might add a comma or subtract one. Then he would turn off his computer. He then said to me, “If that is all you have done for the day it is still writing.”
So for years I believed that a blog was a bitácora. This is the word in Spanish for a ship’s log. It is a beautiful word that does translate to blog and could be used as such. But that is not the case and my Argentine countrymen (and women) prefer to call it a “blog”.
And since I saw a blog as a daily sort of thing I also thought that writing today’s blog tomorrow or tomorrow writing yesterday’s blog was cheating.
When I traveled before I became slightly computer savvy I would make sure my hotel had a business/computer room or if it was close to a computer café. My small form of cheating was to place pictures that I thought would be of use into one draft blog. From there I could put them into my travel blog. I had yet to master (and never did) the action of taking a picture (an awful one at that) with a smart phone and download it into a blog. The idea of writing a blog on a smart phone….!
So little by little I realized that after a trip, say to my hometown of Buenos Aires, I would return to Vancouver, BC (where I live) and write good blogs with good photographs.
At age 74 in the present world of “the best price is free” I can state that as a former magazine/photographer/writer I am a goner. This means I have time in my hands.
My friend the guru of things digital, Tim Bray has a blog that he calls Ongoing. By calling it that he writes as often (or as little ) as he likes in what amounts to a digital stream of consciousness.
I am not ready to write more than one blog a day. But I am prepared to write a string of them, with advancing dates, and then not write any until the last of the future ones is a “today” one.
Since I joined Medium I realized I could post my daily blogs (or the ones that I thought adequate for Medium) there using the handy “Import a story” in Drafts. When I did and do this I try to make my blog more Medium-like or at least informing would-be readers that I live in Vancouver, etc.
With time in my hands I now want to write more often. But I am still stuck on the idea that a blog is a daily diary an not an Ongoing.
What is the solution? Easy! I can write when I want to into Medium. And isn’t that handy?
Why do I blog?
Why do I blog?
Why do I blog? A sobering recapitulation.
Why do I blog? I still don’t know.
