1 EAGLETON NOTES: Why Do You Blog?

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Sunday 5 August 2012

Why Do You Blog?

Last night Frances Garrood asked Why do you blog?  Interesting question.  4½ years ago I wrote the following at Sucked Into Blogland.

I started A Hebridean in New Zealand towards the end of 2007.  My Brother had been blogging for a while and it seemed to me that it was a way of telling my friends and family back in Scotland and England and France and Spain what I was up to in the other half of my life.  It was somewhere between a diary and a supplement to the emails that I sent (and still send).  It is also lovely to look back and be reminded of what I have done and where I have been. 
When I returned to Lewis at the end of April 2008 I continued my diary in Eagleton Notes.  That way my friends in New Zealand could see what I was doing when I was back in Europe. 
Before Andrew (our elder son) died on my birthday in June 2006 he had kept a blog of his long and arduous battle against cancer.  I re-read it some while later and started another blog A Life in the Day Of.  OK silly title but as I used the pseudonym L'Homme Bizarre avec la Barbe Grise why shouldn't it have been a silly title.  I've not kept it up but at some stage my cancer will become a nuisance again and I shall no doubt resort to it as my blanket. 
Perhaps a month or so ago I wandered into a few of the blogs that Scriptor Senex follows on his Rambles.  I found a life out there which was absolutely fascinating and compelling.  I have only visited a small (ish) number of blogs but have discovered a few that I visit every day (almost).  Given that my life was filled before from 0630 to about 0100 (I have never needed much sleep) I now have a real dilemma.  How do I fit my new found acquaintances into my life? 
What really puzzles me, however, is how one can suddenly become so attached to people one has never met and is unlikely ever to meet.  I have become acquainted with someone with one of the most beautiful smiles and sunny outlooks on life; someone whose brain and ability with words (and, obviously other things too) blows me away; someone from 'my' Island in Scotland whom I've never met on the Island (so far as I know); someone from the North of New Zealand who has met recent tragedy with apparent great fortitude and whom I have come to admire; and someone with a bright pink (is it pink?) blog which is full of the most interesting things (which I am working my way through backwards as I've only just come to it).
It is highly unlikely that in non cyber-space life we would live lives that would ever cross.  We may live in different continents and cultures.  We may come from different backgrounds.  We may be from different age brackets.  We may hold diametrically opposing views on certain things (but we may never know).  But we all have a common interest in what each of us has to say. 
Thank you Scriptor Senex for introducing me to an entirely new life.
If I were writing that today I could add new friends and some of the above have gone and some have both come and gone but apart from that I don't think I would alter many words.

25 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear about your son.
    Keep blogging and making friends.

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    1. I have been. Thanks. I've made quite a few very special friends in the last 5 years through Blogland.

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  2. It's a pleasure - I can no longer imagine a life without my blogging friends and I love the fact that most of them, like you, meander through so many different subjects. I have learned so much from them all.

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  3. Well said! A window to the world that unites us in friendship and broadens our perspective on events that would go unnoticed if we didn't know and care for people caught up in them. A world where we don't judge people on appearance or ability but appreciate their thinking. Utterly addictive and stimulating as an addition to "real life" :)

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  4. I too have met so many nice folks in Blogland....it's a place of respite for me.
    From my years of keeping a diary, to just scribbling daily notes on a calendar, I feel I have come full circle again, where I can write and express my thoughts to my friends...some I know really well, and others I will probably never meet, but I regard them as friends because they are sincere and are just like me with hopes and dreams and problems in life as well.
    My blog keeps me in touch with all my worldwide friends... I find comfort here, I can be me, and I can help others by sharing solutions to problems, a kind word, or a motivational post which helps them to move on after a difficult situation.
    I know I am no Mother Theresa, but my blog accomplishes miracles.

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    1. Your Blog radiates warmth and friendship as do your actions. I am proud to be one of your friends.

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  5. I feel much the same. Looking back over the past 3½ years I find it hard to imagine now how I would have coped with "life" if I had not also been blogging and getting to know other bloggers. (I might have found some other way, but that I'll never know!) Blogging has been a blessing in that it has widened my world and given me friends in far-off places even though I haven't been able to physically travel and meet a lot of people during this time.

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    1. Well I'm very glad that you did find your way into Blogland. It's strange but we seem to have lived in the same Blogland for a long time - so long that I can't recall how we met. Although with your prodigious memory for detail I'm sure that you can.

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    2. Dawn, you are so right....Blogging is a blessing.
      By the way, my best friend's name is Dawn, and I named my daughter Dawne (with an 'e'),
      because I loved the name so much.

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    3. Virgina, DawnTreader is my blog signature, borrowed from the ship in the Narnia Chronicles by C S Lewis. This because when I started blogging it felt like a journey into the Great Unknown. My real first name is Monica and no longer a secret even if I'm still using the pen name.

      And Graham, since you were one of the first few to "step out of the fog" for me after my first months of aimless sailing, of course I remember. I think it's probably most correct to say we first "met" at the Soaring Through The World blog, shortly after that was started by Heather in the summer of 2009. Although by then I already knew a little bit about you from Scriptor's blog. Him as well as Heather I think I first came across through the writing-promt blog One Minute Writer, earlier that spring.

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    4. Oh my, I should have suspected, but I just thought it was a coincidence. I love your story, and hey I love the name Monica too.
      Like you, Graham was the very first poster on my blog, and it was because of him, that I actually stepped out into the Blogosphere so confidently.
      What an inspiration he is to all of us.
      Nice to meet you Monica!

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    5. Now you are making me blush but thank you for your kind words.

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  6. Sorry about your hardships GB :(
    As you so rightly put it, blogland has given a new perception on life and a bright, cheerful outlook. xoxox Ruby

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    1. Thanks Ruby. I can't work out why I'm not getting updates on your blog. I've said that before recently. Tonight I've made a note to do something about it in the morning.

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  7. Hooray for blogging! Coincidentally, I've just made my 1000th post. We have a little eruption going on down here Geeb. I bet there's a light dusting of ash on your cottage roof in Napier...

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    1. I'm told that there's certainly a smell of sulphur so a light covering of dust is a possibility. The wind is going straight from Mt Tongoriro to Hawkes Bay.

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  8. I'll forgive you for poaching my title, as this is such a good, readable post. I am so very sorry about your son, GB. But it was good to know a little more about you. I always hesitate to refer to " blog friends"; not because I'm not fond of them. I am. But because its a different kind of friendship. Not face to face ( I haven't met any of mine, though I'd love to), but intimate in an entirely different kind of way. There should be a special name for them....but what?

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    1. Thanks Frances. Originality has never been my forté and it's not the first thing I've copied or plagiarised from you. I do always acknowledge my deeds though. It is a different kind of friendship, I agree. Quite a number of my Blogland friends have become (or already were) friends in my real life too. The special name. Now there's a question. You're the ideas person though Frances. I did have an idea once but I suspect it was like the book I read - unique. It had a green cover if I remember correctly. The book; not the idea.

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  9. Graham, I could almost copy your post and use it as my own with some slight alterations - your reasons for blogging and how you came about it are so similar to my own.

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    1. Meike, the diary aspect is one that I particularly enjoy in both my own and in yours and Monica's and some others. It's good to pop back in time occasionally and be reminded of times past or explore times you haven't visited before.

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