A Terrible Way To Make A Living: Blogging Is For Idiots
Blogging is for idiots.
There are two ways to blog. You can write with your most authentic voice. It might be raw and it could abuse the English language, or you can write a stylized corporate blog.
A stylized corporate blog is dull, and you, the writer, are totally replaceable. It’s without risk, and I’m unclear on the reward. I know that I’m not interested in reading it.
I want to read raw stories, so I write that way. I live this way too. I talk and then I think, sometimes I write and then I think. More often I write and never think at all.
Social media (blogging in particular) can be an echo chamber of “oh you’re wonderful” and “I love what you said about ___”. Only your friends tell you when you have salad in your teeth. I got called out today, and though there isn’t a bit of malice in what I did, it hurt someone. I own that. It doesn’t matter how you feel, it only matters how you behave. This is my mantra, and I’ve behaved poorly.
Blogging lends itself to that. Twitter and Facebook and Whrrl celebrate and connect us all and we really understand each other. Until we don’t. We (in the new media space) poke fun at one another, and we hope that other folks spell our names right. I forgot the number one rule of all of this, I can’t joke about you, unless you own the giggle.
So I find myself very fallible, very wrong, contrite, nauseous and very sad.
Every blogger has moments of wanting to delete it all, right? If I was smart, I probably would. But I’m a blogger, and we’re a little bit off. So I’m going to keep marching forward even though I know it’s beyond stupid. I’ll have to learn to think things through a little lot better.