{"id":3614,"date":"2012-07-02T21:53:43","date_gmt":"2012-07-03T01:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=3614"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:18","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:18","slug":"so-what-is-your-blog-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2012\/07\/so-what-is-your-blog-about\/","title":{"rendered":"So, What is Your Blog About?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, I attended my first get-together of the Asheville Blogger Society<\/a>.\u00a0 I met some nice people (writers are nice people, in general) who asked the inevitable question: so, what is your blog about?\u00a0 My first instinct was to blurt out, it’s about me.\u00a0 But that’s not quite right.\u00a0 It’s my view of the world.\u00a0 True, but still not quite right.\u00a0 It’s about things that compel me to write.\u00a0 Politics.\u00a0 Poetry.\u00a0 Philosophy.\u00a0 Physics.\u00a0 People.\u00a0 Personhood.<\/p>\n

I suppose I fashion myself to be the 21st Century incarnation of the syndicated columnist Sydney J. Harris<\/a>.\u00a0 Wrightly or wrongly.<\/p>\n

The general wisdom is that a successful<\/em> blog must cover a specific topic.\u00a0 Like, how to catch vermin invading your home (on that note, ihatevermin.com<\/a> is available as of this writing).\u00a0 But I must ask, what is a successful<\/em> blog?\u00a0 Is it one that has tens of thousands of readers?\u00a0 Does it generate tens of thousands in ad revenue for the writer?\u00a0 Nice for others perhaps, but those are not my goals.<\/p>\n

First, I want to have fun.\u00a0 The act of writing, the challenge of selecting the right word and the right place to put a comma, provides a certain satisfaction upon one’s own rereading, well before the product is read by others.\u00a0 It is hard for me to imagine any writer who does not want to satisfy his\/her own sensibility of the language first and foremost.<\/p>\n

But I would also like to make connections.\u00a0 The comments made by the readers of this blog are highly prized, not simply for the content but for the decision to comment.\u00a0 Interactions, whether human or chemical or physical, are the golden threads that line the nest we call our universe.<\/p>\n

Writing this blog will not make connections.\u00a0 That is something I need to do in person, taking time to care for people, listening to them instead of them listening to me.\u00a0 I get it.\u00a0\u00a0 One-Sided Conversation<\/a> doesn’t make it today.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

“One-Sided Conversation” – Copyright Eric A. Maatta, recorded 1974 by Eric Maatta and Craig Collins<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, I attended my first get-together of the Asheville Blogger Society.\u00a0 I met some nice people (writers are nice people, in general) who asked the inevitable question: so, what is your blog about?\u00a0 My first instinct was to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3614"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3793,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions\/3793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}