Over the last few days I've been exploring the hows and whys of blogging. For me, blogging is all about focusing my thoughts and expressing myself. I do it as much for myself as I do for my readers and friends. I realize that not every blogger works that way, and I've tried to cover as many different perspectives as possible, without turning this into a dissertation or doctorate thesis. Hopefully -- and here's where feedback is appreciated -- I've succeeded in entertaining and enlightening you in the process of succeeding in what I set out to do. Thank you for taking the time to follow along.  Read more »

If you were to attempt to catalog the blogosphere as it exists right this moment, you could devote your entire life to that project and still never finish. There are a lot of blogs out there. Some of them are educational. Many of them are interesting. Most of them just plain stink. Every one of those blogs is motivated by something, although each blog's particular motivation may be different in its specifics. Still, there are common driving factors among bloggers, and most of the blogs you'll find out there are driven by one or more of these common factors.  Read more »

I'm nowhere near as good at blogging as most of my peers out here on the 'Net, and I know it. Sometimes I post about things that only I care about, and sometimes I get intimidated and don't post at all, for long stretches of time. Finding your voice and your passion is important, but it's not easy.

This blog, in it's various incarnations, has had many different topics and themes, and it's gone through several distinct stages in its lifetime, some successful, some... not so much.  Read more »

It's interesting reading other people's blogs. Being a blogger myself for nearly seven years, I know that it's often very difficult to figure out what to write about, or how to write it. That challenge is common to all publications and art forms, and it's often called 'finding your voice'. It involves picking your topic(s) to write about, figuring out who you're writing for, and then writing it in a way that makes other people want to read it.  Read more »

I found a neat site on the 'Net today: Don to Earth, an insightful blog written by the world's third oldest blogger. The guy is pretty coherent considering his age (and the fact that he may have recently had a minor stroke), and he's pretty wise, too.

Reading his words got me thinking about blogging. It's a strange hobby, isn't it? I write down a bunch of my thoughts on this here electronic notepad, and then I click a button and it's sent out to the Grand Ether, for anyone or no one to read. Why do I (we) do it? What goes into a blog entry? And in the end, what do we get out of it? I mean to explore all of those things over the next few posts.

Tomorrow I'll be discussing the basic how-to of blogging, to shed a little light on just how difficult it is to do this every day (or week, or month, or whatever). Look for it!