Blogging for now
I check my blog every day, not through vanity (I don't have stats) but out of interest to see what's in the "on this day" section. It's why I added it after all.
There has been discussion for some time about how the default, reverse chronological view isn't very effective as we just funnel readers to what's new rather than what's good.
I think that gets away from what blogging is, or was always supposed to be.
A personal blog is an online journal, your day to day thoughts published on the web rather than in (or in addition to) a physical notebook. It is an unfinished story, a scratch pad, an outboard brain; and while there are highlights it is more the journey that's the important aspect.
It brings back the question of who the blog is for; the answer should invariably be yourself.
CJ Chilvers wrote that he started journaling for the wrong reasons, "for legacy", and that we should journal for now. I think the same applies to blogging.
Blogging for legacy, blogging to have people just come and read the best bits, is the wrong reason and implies writing for others rather then yourself. A highlights reel does a disservice to who we are in the moment and that who is always changing.
This doesn't mean, however, that we can't use a blog as a way to talk to our future selves, an aide memoire if you will. I find it interesting to look back but probably don't respond to past me as often as I should.
@colinwalker Well said. ??
@colinwalker As an aside to that, how do you do your “On this day” view, and especially your Dave Winer-style front-page “Today” view? I seem to recall you talking about it being a WordPress plugin. If so, did you ever release it?
@devilgate The Today page is a custom page template. The "On this day" code is here on GitHub. It's included in the page template but could be turned into a plugin. I think someone might have done at some point.
@devilgate I did a bit of CSS trickery to do the toggle for show/hide the list of posts.
@colinwalker Thanks.
@colinwalker Love the idea of blogging for now—aligns well with my attempt to be more mindful of the present these days. Well said, and thanks for sharing.
@vasta That's probably how I’ve been approaching things, just not calling it being mindful.
@colinwalker Nicely put.
On the subject of not blogging for legacy I am reminded of the practice of deleting old tweets. Before I finally deleted my Twitter account I had considered going down this route; it makes some degree of sense considering the real time nature of the service but conflicts with the notion that tweets can also serve as a public record. I guess a lot of it depends on who you are and how attached you are to what you've posted. It makes me wonder whether taking the same approach would work with blogging. If truly "blogging for now" then maybe, but it would remove the element of talking to my future self which is a big part of what I do. It's an interesting idea, though.
If this blog had a tagline it would be "an ongoing conversation with myself." I wanted to talk about blogchains, or threads, and Elder-blogging in "Blogging for now" but couldn't remember where I'd read about it. Chris Aldrich's post "On blogging infrastructure" reminded me. It was an idea formulated by Venkatesh Rao at Ribbon Farm. An Elder blog is one which has been around for a while and has "significant history" (i.e. a decent amount of content) such that it can be viewed holistically rather than on a per post basis, teasing threads woven into its fabric. I've described the blog as this ongoing conversation on numerous occasions over the years, often referring to earlier posts but think I fall down on turning those references into full threads, building on previous ideas. I tend to blog more in "batches" with a series of posts on the same topic in quick succession (I've mentioned this before but can't find it) but this isn't really the same as a blog chain. The elder-blog is a direct contrast to the idea of truly blogging for now where posts are of the moment, disposable. This blog is now around eleven and a half years old (the first five years of my blogging life have been lost except for scattered instances on the Internet Archive) but it's not quite prime elder-blog real estate yet due to my taking various, often protracted, breaks. Still, as much as I'm curious about how a "blog for now" would really work (even to the point of removing old posts, just as with tweets) it is the potential for continuity, for themes, and for talking to myself - past and future - that makes the blog what it is. It's just need to do more of it.
Read Blogging for now by Colin Walker (colinwalker.blog)
Colin nibbles around the edges of defining a digital public commonplace book and even the idea of “though spaces” though without tacitly using either phrase. –November 20, 2019 at 09:20AM
Syndicated copies to:
Rao's post rang true to me: engineer my next process. It echoes my desire to do something a bit different with my writing, to work in a different way and see what comes of it. The garden may seem like an all consuming vanity project (it very likely is) undertaken in lieu of actual writing but it is also a means to an end, a creative endeavour in its own right. On this day last year Blogging for now was probably what kick-started my thoughts moving to a more ephemeral blog: writing for now, today, as though that's all that matters. In that context the garden seems a contradiction, maybe it is, but I am that contradiction - we all are. I reserve the right to change my mind, to disagree with past me just as future me will turn his nose up at the present. I need to look for different ways of working/doing/thinking, to not get trapped in habit. I need to find purpose and establish proper goals and, hopefully, having everything in one place will help.