11 Pipers Piping about themselves on a blog
Thank you all for celebrating the Advent season with me! I heartily enjoyed the challenge of posting everyday of the season, even though I didn't make it through it all. I also enjoyed scrounging for fun internety things and generally sharing the season with those who are far away from me. Holidays acknowledge the cyclical nature of life and the passage of feelings and experiences--the coming and going of difficulty and pleasure both. It also is a time to "gather in" and take stock and count blessings. I count my friends as my greatest blessing.
If anyone is still paying attention, we are in the 11th day of Christmas, with tomorrow being Epiphany! Yeah! The Zoroastrian Astrologers have almost arrived!
I am back at doing some blogging with the new year. What has been keeping my attention thus far has been the steady humming of internet writing urges and the shift of our lives from the waking world to the online world. I know for myself this last year has brought me more facebook, more twitter, and more looking for inspiring reading around the internet. But I also think that it has brought the commercial world closer to me, even though I don't have a television or generally hang out with pop-culturalists.
As I contemplate my own career and its trajectory, facing a world where only 50% of PhDs in the humanities get tenure track positions, I wonder about what it means to be a public intellectual. I see a lot of "life hackery" available on the web: lots of enterprising, ambitious,tech-saavy twenty-somethings talking a lot about how to find what you love, to make money at your passion, and attract the lifestyle of your dreams.
A case in point ins a fellow writing about the value of guest posting--where you write for other's blogs. This is a way of generating traffic to your own site and seems to work VERY effectively. (I found this guy through a guest post on dumblittleman.com). This may be common to most folks working on sharing their interests over the internet, but what continues to fascinate me is how EVERYONE is encouraged now to have an online presence and persona. It amounts to crafting an angle from which to view the world.
And if you have more than one hobby/skill/job/opinion, it is good to have several blogs so that these personas can play the same tune to greater effect. It is what in the e-marketing world is called The Long Tail. Have a show that involves monkeys? Why not make it a red-hat-guitar-playing-Monkey-from-Central-Ohio-who-loves-pizza. This way, people can find what they are really looking for--and you will be there for them, right at the top of the google search list.
So, you need a blog. This fellow has "6 Powerful Reasons Why Everyone Needs a Blog." Here is the gloss:
By blogging, you improve your reach.
"More people find out who you truly are." (yes, he says that).
It improves your 1. confidence for showing people your voice.
It builds 2. connections with people you otherwise would not have met who share your interests.
Blogging can get you jobs through these connections. (he calls these 3. opportunities)
Blogging builds capacity through its demands for creativity, consistency, and coherent writing--in a word, it forces 4. clarity.
"5. Self-improvement" through meeting your fears, setting goals, and challenging yourself
By blogging about what you love, you add 6. value to the world. (I think this is better said as helping others/contributing positively to the world)
Of course, I scoff at the marketing of this--the shameless self-promotion. And I see this as an effect of this online persona building. What does all this self-reflexive activity of constant selling do to our psyches?
But...
I like what he says about writing about something you love: about using a blog as a platform for discussing a topic you are interested in learning more about. Writing about a topic DOES build confidence. And wouldn't it be nice if, after all that labor of love, it opened doors? What about blogging that is topic-specific instead of an open letter to friends and readers?
After all of this said, I will say the most interesting thing going on in my life is my new meditation practice. Which is very far from blogging. But even this has a crucial online element: meditation classes via podcast by Ken McCleod.
Any thoughts on how they want to use the internet in the coming year?