Blogging original content and personal stuff
Lesley has a blog post up today that’s got me thinking. It revolves around a conversation she had with a journalist in which he offered some feedback on her blogging:
His main feedback was that he doesn’t like posts where I just quote someone else, he wants to read what I think and feel, why it matters to me.
I do have spats of being personal on this blog, but overall I don’t consider myself very interesting. I’m also highly sensitive to publicly advertising my own particular personality/ mood aberrations.
I will say though, when I have been particularly open relating to my own personal struggles, these posts have been well received and appreciated and I have oftentimes toyed with being more open in this regard.
I don’t feel the need to blog about personal issues in order to fulfil a therapeutic need, however, I can certainly appreciate the cathartic nature of the same. I would most certainly blog on such issues if I it were of particular benefit to others.
However, from much personal experience we do still sadly live in an environment within which there is much social stigma attached to the area of mental health. These painful experiences of such stigma, invoke in me a bashful reticence to be too open, which is a shame in a way.
As for original content, I don’t consider myself a very original thinker and as there are great original thinkers online, I particularly delight in highlighting their work here on this blog.
I may not be able to produce music, but I certainly have an ear for fine music and the same goes for finding those nuggets of fine thought online. These ‘nuggets’ tend to discover me rather than the other way around. I must confess that I tend to blog that which jumps out at me, rather than having a particular agenda. As a Christian of course, much of this is wrapped in a Christian worldview.
Over time this blog has morphed into documenting current events through the theological grist, and overall I’m not unhappy with that. But this does make me heavily reliant on secondary sources, normally accompanied with – what I like to think is – a pithy comment from me.
Judging by the dreadfully addictive blog statistics – I’ve recently kicked my blog stat lust – the subject matter, blogging style, comments, and variance of subjects, seems relatively popular for a niche blog like this.
Blogging is most certainly an art and one in which I hope to improve as I garner experience.
February 21st, 2011 at 6:05 pm
I think you are way too hard on yourself. As I said on LFs blog, it is about testimony in one form or another. People come here largely to read us, not a hotch-potch of clippings.
I come here to engage with what is in your head, not the head of someone else. What I have discovered here is good and insightful, so please don’t reproach yourself too much!
More of the same please, boss!
February 22nd, 2011 at 1:03 am
I love your blog! You point me to things I don’t have time to find or wouldn’t have even looked for. I also enjoy the personal glimpses.
I actually started my blog to work through a life-changing event. Those posts are buried so far back now that they are rarely (but still occasionally read). BUT everyone who commented was always so very kind. I thought I’d surely bring criticism on myself but was surprised.
My biggest problem these days is time and I have hit *Press This* on other material with scant comments. My only solace is that I won’t be in grad school forever and one day will have time to tell the world what I think about everything!