beginnings and endings

During my research process for a recent project on the usefulness of social media tools, I uncovered a great deal of writing and opinion on the transition of blogging, from its origin as a form of social connection in limited special-interest groups, to its present day incarnation, as an integral part of information exchange for both personal and business use.

So, I began to wonder. What is the nature of blogging? Can I look at blogging as an evolutionary form of communication, one created in the human consciousness because of the easy availability of technology, which allows the human mind to explore new possibilities aloud? Or is it a form of retroactive response to the natural flow that is our lives, giving us a much needed outlet to re-hash and process these same events into meaningful interpretations through our blogs?

As a new blogger, still trying to find my own personal style and "public voice" I was stuck by the words of Thomas Griffith, a former police reporter who rose to become the senior editor at Time magazine, who said "Journalism is in fact history on the run," Griffith went on to explain: "It is history written in time to be acted upon: thereby not only recording events but at times influencing them. Journalism is also the recording of history while the facts are not all in."

Although I am aware of the current debate as to whether bloggers are actual journalists or simply amateur writers responding to stories through the lens of their own perspectives, I choose to think that they are indeed journalists, each with a unique expressiveness on their own self-selected topics.

For example, taking this blog as an illustration of that point, I can review my posts over the last few months and see the historical progression of my ideas and understanding grow on the different subjects I have studied, and this growth has been made possible through the discussions I have had with you, the reader. Writing is a form of self expression but it also a process of learning for the writer, with each word building new ideas and each design selected to express a certain tone.

Let's go back to the historical beginning of my blog so I can try to explain what I mean. In starting this blog, I spent a few anxious hours thinking anout the title of this blog, as I wanted it to be unique and yet express my determination to accomplish something that I wasn't very keen on doing.

It just so happened that my husband and I were watching a Little League World Series game, at the same time I was setting up my outline and looking at various designs for the blog. I kept trying different titles but none seemed quite right, and then I heard an announcer describe a player on one of the teams as a kid who just keeps on "plowing the river." I thought he was referring to a kid who just hit a line drive, right past everyone, up the middle of the field, but my husband thought he was referring to the sheer energy of the kid who was pitching at the time. (My husband based his belief on the fact that the announcer for that game was Orel Hershiser, a former pitcher. I based my belief on my own preferred interpretation, so my husband was probably right on that one. )

But no matter who was correct, I decided I liked that title, and that I was pretty sure that I had heard that statement or a similar one used before, so I went to my friends Google, Bing and Ask to see if I could find the original quote. I found that river boat captains used that phrase to describe difficult journeys when they had to pilot their boats to break through obstacles and junk to find their way through (an appropriate description of my mindset, at the time) and I found a similar statement by Simon Bolivar, who said "Whosoever works for a revolution is plowing the sea" a statement born out of his frustration in his fight for independence. As I considere myself a fighter for the independence of new ideas, this too, felt appropriate.

I share that story with you to illustrate that this is when I began to reach my first understanding of how any blog, even my blog, can be used to maintain an allegiance to discovery of truth and tribute to the past, as a way of creating new directions of meaning for the future; made possible by using the experiences of ourselves and others to share meaning that is filtered through our own interpretations.

Continuing my exploration of my blogging style by reading through old posts, I can see that in my earlier posts, my writing was more formal and distant, and I believe this grows out of my natural reluctance to relinquish my privacy by revealing personal information in my blog. I still think that there should not be very much of that in a blog that is designed to look more outwardly than inwardly for new discoveries in areas associated with technical communication.

Continuing to read from the beginning of my blog, I also note several changes in design as I read through each new post, along with a growing comfort using new media tools to insert text, html, create style changes and adjust the appearance of the blog. As I move into more recent postings, my blogging style has become less formal in some posts, at times even dipping into over-casualness with the reader. I am not sure I want to do that too much, so I will have to remember to monitor that tendency.

In summary, I was reluctant to begin blogging because I thought that it would take time away from my learning process and reveal too much of what makes me - well - be me, to the outside world. But, what I discovered is that it has added to my learning process, and has instead revealed more of myself to me.

Up until a few weeks ago, I thought that I would probably abandon this blog as being too time-consuming, but after making these self-discoveries, I am rethinking that idea. After all, if I found out this much in the past three months, who knows what I could discover in the future?