On “Blogging”
You might notice I’ve changed the title of this page from “blog” to “writing”. Although I lament that I hate writing at every possible chance, I think “writing” is a more accurate term for this section of my website, and a more preferable term for me. Blogging, to me, describes a place where I am expected to post in a timely manner, always refreshing my content and posting lists and roundups and scheduling posts that are planned in an editorial calendar and with a marketing purpose in mind. That’s not me. I don’t want to post according to a schedule – I want to write to make sense of the thoughts and words in my head, when they are relevant enough to share with this slice of the internet.
The other day as I drove home from work I thought to myself about all of the great blogs and writers that exist on the internet. The industry professionals and innovators that have written about project management and marketing and content before me, the people that I follow or those whom I have never heard of, like me, trying to find their place in the industry. I wondered to myself what was the point of creating all of this content that will undoubtedly already be out there. “12 gifs that describe project management” or “The 5 best ways to be productive” or something like that. Trying to write well and be relevant – I want to BE those things. I want authenticity.
When I first started using the internet and taking computer programming courses after school (I was a founding member of the “computer club” in middle school, which surprisingly was a huge hit with my classmates), I would fiddle around with rudimentary HTML and CSS, having no content for a website but wanting to make one for myself. I wanted to stake a claim in this virtual world, where I soon found my niche on design and fan art forums. Ah, the early years.
As time went on I continued to have an internet presence, in the form of a fanart site, then a Photoshop personal art showcase (yikes), and finally, a personal blog as blogging took hold in the early 2000’s. I had a LiveJournal as any teen girl my age might have, then moved to Blogger as LiveJournal fell out of fashion, and continued this into college, when I discovered and became a part of the world of food blogs. I maintained my food blog until about a year ago, when work suddenly consumed my life. When interviewing for my current job they asked for writing samples and the best I had at the time were those food blog posts – and that worked. To me, blogging has always been an intensely personal part of my life. I kept all of my accounts private and secret only to my internet friends, until the worlds of Twitter and Facebook meant having your personal life available for all to see.
Now, I write for two blogs at work. One is a corporate blog, and the other a design-oriented blog – a little less formal. At my former agency job, we recommended to almost all of our clients that they keep a blog for their business to update customers on news, events, and industry changes. I didn’t always agree that every site needed a blog, that seemed to be the easiest standard practice for even the least-web savvy client to understand.
As Jeffrey Zeldman wrote in his article “This Is A Website“, almost everything recognized as blogging or content is now recycled media. I’ve changed the title of this page because this is not a blog for marketing purposes, but for thoughts and essays, thoughtful observations, or quick reminders to myself about my industry and career. It is deeper than finding the “10 best ways to speak with your client” (although I do enjoy reading opinions on this sort of thing!), but more about untangling the difficulties and successes in my career, and diving deeper into the web-based industry.
