Why Re-Start the Blog?
Creating Community via Online Means
Credit: Gerd Altmann via Pixabay
This isn’t the first blog I’ve ever kept, or even the second, or the third. In fact, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve stopped and re-started my blogging habit. Over the years I’ve waffled back and forth between keeping it up on a nearly-daily basis, posting just once or twice a week, and admitting that I’m not posting at all so I shut the blog down entirely. Over the past couple of years, I’ve tended toward the latter far more often than the former.
So why am I re-starting the blog anyway, if I know full well that I have difficulty keeping up the habit?
The personal answer is an easy one: because I’m a writer. I’ve been a writer for my entire life, beginning with my mother noticing the tendency when I was only three years old. Sometimes it has been fiction; sometimes it has been fan fiction; and sometimes it has been non-fiction. I’ve even dabbled some in poetry and songwriting, although I generally won’t share that with anyone but myself.
But that answers the question only on a personal level, and writing for yourself is better done in a journal versus a blog. So why am I re-starting a public blog, where I not only am sharing my words with the entire world, but I’m also opening myself up to significant criticism?
That answer’s a bit more complex, and because of that, less easy. The pat answer is that I feel like I have something to say to the world. It’s more than that, though. It’s that I write as a method of exploration, and often, the insights that come from that exploration are worth sharing. More than that, I use writing as a means of seeking and building community. I read as much as I write, and often my words are responses to others’ words.
Very few people would argue that our world today is sorely lacking in community. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many people to isolate in circumstances where the only interaction comes in short spurts such as texts and Tweets. But even before then, community ties were breaking down. There are any number of theories as to why that happened, as well as any number of theories about how to respond.
I don’t have anything to add to the conversation about what happened. However, I have a considerable amount to add to conversations about re-establishing community among modern Americans. That will be the purpose of this blog: exploration and ideas about establishing community. This will take many different forms, but all of my posts will relate back to that single ideal.
This is a personal blog, and I don’t have any plans to monetize it or try to “turn pro.” That said, I will welcome opportunities to make guest posts and, sometime in the future, may even open my own blog up to the same. For right now, I’m simply going to re-start, plan my posts, and watch to see what emerges. I think I’ll be excited to find out what it turns out to be.
Originally posted at https://collingwest.blog/2021/why-re-start-the-blog/.