“I don’t like blogging. I never wanted to be a blogger. I still blog anyways.”
I think that’s where a lot of us are these days. Nobody actually likes blogging and when it comes to keeping our blogs active and alive, it’s just a chore. It’s work, not passion; monotony, not creativity. As a character out of Heinlein once put it “nobody enjoys writing, they write because they have to”. But really, it’s all about how we look at things.
Let’s run down metaphor lane. Blogging is a chore, yes; but it’s not a “cleaning the house” kind of chore. It’s more like tending to the garden. It takes effort, but gives us fruits and vegetables. Or at the very least some pretty flowers that people can stop and admire.
People who blog on a regular basis, and can see through the monotony of tossing words to paper, usually go for one of the two. Either they do it because they want people to stop and read (hey, who doesn’t?) but then move on, or else they do it because the blog will generate a fruit of it’s own: currency.
Usually the blogs that fall under category 2 are the easiest to spot. They exist to sell and trump your better senses. They rely on cheeky adjectives like like “top”, “best” and “secret” and aren’t afraid to dig one-liners from a bag callled “catch-phrase galore”. It’s literal crap; ads for x-ray goggles on the back of old comic books had more merit.
They can be persuasive, and not just to the reader but to other bloggers. It answers the old “if we’re not making, then why bother?” dilemma of blogging in the first place. Blogging is a means to an end, a tangible end at that. But the end result of blogging doesn’t have to be money or despondence.
There’s reasons a plenty. It’s clearing the slate, tossing some of those tangled phrases into the open, making space for more ideas in your mind, and getting ready to move on to bigger and better. The way an actor or a singer warms up their vocals chords, blogging warms up our minds and our typing hands.
Blogging is a chore only if that’s the way we want to look at it.
