Blogging -- You Can, Too!!

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Just in case my readers would like to start their own blog, I thought I’d give you some information.

What is a blog, in the first place? Well, you ought to check it up on Wikipedia (--says it's "an online diary") or Google, or something like that, but I’ll tell you what it is as far as I’m concerned.  (I may lose a lot of readers because of what I’m about to say.)

Though basically a blog is just a website on which you post your thoughts (which is in line with the etymology of the word, which comes from “Web log”, an intermittent log of your thoughts), it was originally intended to be a record of your daily –or periodic – web browsing.  Blogs have traditionally contained lots of links, and the blogger’s editorializing was minimal in the old days.  A blog was initially an index to all the interesting websites that the blogger had discovered, in more or less reverse chronological order.

What goes into a blog?  In my case, one of two things happen: sometimes a topic arrives in my head, and I try to find websites that illuminate whatever ideas I have concerning the topic.  I might, for instance, want to write a blog (a blog post, actually; the blog is the totality of all my posts) about Julie Andrews.  I write it like a feature article, and illustrate it with links to Julie Andrews websites, photos, and videoclips, etc.

Other times, I see a post on Facebook, or in the junkmail I get that catches my interest.  If it is self-explanatory and I largely agree with it, I just share it on Facebook.  (No, you do not need to friend me, please; I’m a lot less fun on Facebook than I am on my blog.)  If it needs some counter-arguments, or if the material needs to be amplified, I blog about it.  So that’s what goes in my so-called blog.

Why should you blog?  One reason I blog is that writing clarifies my thinking.  You’re probably wondering what my thinking is like before I blog, seeing what a mess my blog is.  The answer is: it’s not pretty.  Some of the blogs I’ve seen are terrible: bad grammar, sloppy thinking, runaway emotion, bad data aggravated by prejudice.  I know I have my biases, but no one could possibly doubt that I at least try to be moderate in my criticism.  When you think about it, nobody is forced to read a blog; if anyone at all is reading yours, you know it must be helping someone.  Or at least, giving someone a good laugh, which I don’t grudge them.

I got started in this business by writing reviews for Amazon.  A lot of good reviewers write for Amazon, but relatively few reviewers are able to present a good case for either liking or disliking a product, and fewer still can do so with good grammar and spelling.

Liking things is something I see as an important part of what I do.  My office is often filled with good music, and when we’re waiting for something in class, I’m not above showing the students an interesting clip on YouTube.  Young people these days are growing up among adults who are culture-poor, or who feel bashful about sharing their likes and dislikes with young people.  My experience with young people is that they’re sure of what they like, but they’re open to the possibility that other stuff might be interesting under the right circumstances.  So if I did not ever play Träumerei to my students, the chances are that they would never, ever get the opportunity to either like it or hate it.  Tom Corbett’s budget for schools has made certain that kids aren’t going to hear Träumerei in school, that’s for damn sure.  So, quoting from Arthur Conan Doyle, or John Donne, or the Bible is almost an evangelical imperative for me (atheism notwithstanding).

Should you publicize your blog?  I have the blog listed in some sort of List of All Blogs, and of course Google has it linked into their search engine in a minor way.  (I get to indicate keywords with each blog, which generates pointers to the blog if anyone searches on any of those words, or all of the words, or something like that.)  I figure that the less I publicize the blog, the more I’m likely to get away under the radar of liberal-blog-haters.  What’s the point, anyway?  I’m already famous in some quarters, and those are the only quarters that matter!

How can you get started?  All the way at the top of this page, you should see a white B on an orange background.  This is a link that takes you to the Blogspot headquarters.  There you’re guided through the steps of creating your very own blog in words of half a syllable; it is very easy.  You could easily create a nicer-looking blog than this one.  All you need are a Google mail account (and I think they might even be satisfied with a Hotmail account), and maybe a clean digital photo of yourself (or even your pet mongoose, or even no photo at all).  Let me know if you do successfully set up your blog!

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