I'm not actually a very good blogger.

[randomness]

I was reminded of while going over my posts this year (in order to answer that "where I slept in 2010" meme) was how little I actually wrote while I was away from home. Every day there were a host of events to post about, yet I was much too busy living through the events to say much about them. It's clear I'd need to set aside several hours at the end of each day to key them all in and post in order to really do them justice; several hours which in my life as I live it now I simply spend experiencing more. That, or I'd need to have someone travel with me who would write it. And who would do that? And wouldn't I just end up having experiences with them instead? In any case, that would fail to be me writing.

I don't think this is a problem for me as a life lived, but it does make me feel like I leave a lot unsaid that I'd like to have said.

The other thing I noticed about blogging was how so much of human events seemed to be a lot of boredom and routine without notable incident, until very suddenly it all changed. This was true in the financial crisis, where the markets were cooking along until they abruptly seized up. It was also tragically true in Bangkok this spring.

"As it turned out," my friend AA said when I saw her later, "you got out just in time."

I feel like telling that story, but I've now tried blogging it twice, and I haven't been satisfied with either attempt.

Comments

[cme]

This is about how I feel about me and blogging, too.

Except I think having someone to follow me and blog my life would be a bit creepy! :)

[randomness]

It would!

In general I'm glad of the fact that I've chosen to prioritize experiencing over recording, but occasionally I wish for better recording.

[muffyjo]

Sometimes it's just nice to drop a list in of things that you did which doesn't take hours...merely minutes. Just a bullet list, that's like a small reference guide to a day or week? I think the idea of giving hours to a post is daunting, personally, but if I give a post a good 5 minutes I may be able to come back and expand on it, I may not but I do have a record for later years.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

The problem for me is that a good post about what I did on a given day overseas requires a lot more than minutes. If I posted a bullet list, that would neither be interesting to read nor intelligible to anyone else--likely not even me after a few months--so anything useful I'd write would take a significant amount of time.

[istemi.livejournal.com]

I'm finding a middle ground by writing things up for myself in a desktop diary app. There are quirky details that would be very difficult to explain to anyone else. I'm using Memoire for Mac. I can drag photos in, too, saving myself 1000 words.

Despite that -- me too. Even without the pressure to polish something for others to consume and understand, it takes a long time to write. Is it worth spending yet another hour in front of the laptop? Too often I say 'no'.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Is it worth spending yet another hour in front of the laptop? Too often I say 'no'.

Exactly. All the more so when I'm not carrying a laptop at all and then have to add the challenge of getting to a computer.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've got lots of notes in small notebooks which are becoming more and more obscure to me with each passing month. :(

[tcb.livejournal.com]

As someone who does consider himself a writer/blogger, I'm well familiar with the conundrum. I could have written much more frequently during our 3 month trip, but was too busy living the life. Other bloggers I know manage to post more often, some just go for shorter. I struggle with that. It always takes at least an hour or three for me to craft something I'm proud of. One way I hope to solve this, besides learning to write faster/shorter, is taking the copious notes I take and using it as material while I'm back home.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

One way I hope to solve this, besides learning to write faster/shorter, is taking the copious notes I take and using it as material while I'm back home.

I think there's a stylistic decision one can make about whether to make one's posts quick and punchy or more discursive. At one extreme people simply tweet what they've been doing and reduce everything to 140 characters, but from what I've read of your posts I don't believe that would appeal to you any more than it does to me.

Having gone down the road of taking copious notes--on paper, no less!--I can say that I find myself making the decision to live the life over writing it down even when at home. I guess my approach to life at home is similar enough to life while travelling that similar issues arise.

[tcb.livejournal.com]

I think there's a stylistic decision one can make about whether to make one's posts quick and punchy or more discursive. At one extreme people simply tweet what they've been doing and reduce everything to 140 characters, but from what I've read of your posts I don't believe that would appeal to you any more than it does to me.

There's always a middle ground. I *know* that I tend to write too long - that tends to be apparent when I'm making pitches for professional publications. I get stuck thinking that every detail is important, when some of them don't move the story along. One needs to understand the attention span of one's readers, and unfortunately, those spans are getting shorter all the time. That said, I still tend towards "meatier" discourses, and I expect I always will.

Having gone down the road of taking copious notes--on paper, no less!--I can say that I find myself making the decision to live the life over writing it down even when at home. I guess my approach to life at home is similar enough to life while travelling that similar issues arise.

All of my notes are on paper - I carry a space pen and a moleskine squared notebook whenever I travel. I filled up an entire notebook, even having to add a few pages, during our 3 months. I *don't* however tend to take notes at home - the days tend to be largely uninteresting, and I tend to be online more, so things like FB and Twitter and email tend to fill in the gaps.