Blogging about blogging?

A little tweeter

While I've spent some time on Twitter, I have largely eschewed the world of Social Media, until recently.

Several friends in the past have suggested I try writing a blog. While I agree I have a lot to say, usually I am describing the number of words that I use and not so much the value of them. What could I possibly say that anyone would want to hear?  As sad as it sounds, my utterances are largely limited to bitching about how crummy my life is. Hardly uplifting stuff.

I am amazed, perhaps more so than any reader, that here I am writing blog entries. I am getting positive feedback from friends, so I will take that as moderate encouragement to continue.

I'm certain my strategy is nothing new, but recently I had a chat with someone else trying to get into blogging and promised I would blog, well, about blogging.

What do you write about?

It's the first thing people ask me when I tell them I blog.  Most of the blogs I read are topic focused, but I'm not that focused and I don't think you have to be. So I just say I haven't found my voice yet and I'm just learning.

I write about anything that interests me and if I don't write I can usually find some inspirational quotation to post.  Sometimes I get a good snapshot and share that. A lot of the time I regurgitate something I've found out there on the intertubes that matches the interests of someone I know who is reading. Because I'm a computer geek, I talk about using computers.

I'm experimenting with a lot of different little things. Depending on how those work for me, this blog will evolve and may become more focused. I'm in no hurry. I started blogging to scratch a writing itch and I have a lot of scratch left in me yet. ;)

I suspect due to my background in journalism, I like to have a lot of information around me and I use Twitter and Google+ to manage it. They both have the ability to be topically focused which helps to sift a lot of information into a manageable amount.

Twitter is a fast response tool where ideas and media are shared in a rapidly changing surf-like ebb and flow.  It's can be very impromptu and very fast for organizing.

Twitter is like a conversation on the dance floor - fast and jumping around a lot. Google+ is that same conversation taken to the living room - there's plenty of room to spread out and it's comfortable for lots of people to get involved in the conversation.

In fact, that's a lot of what Social Media has been about for me - listening, compiling, accumulating and when there are enough items to talk about, then write about it. I have been surprised several times when themes emerge without any effort on my part. It happens more often than you'd think. I suppose that has something to do with my news background again.

Most of all, here at the starting line, I'm not listening for "big issues". I'm just doing day to day things, and telling people about it.  To be honest, I'd be really happy if a theme emerged from all the noise in my head, if only so that I could stop writing this blog about writing this blog.