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April 14, 2005
One Year Blogging Anniversary (almost, anyway), and
Thoughts on Blogging
This week's Homespun Bloggers Symposium question comes from patterico:
How has blogging affected your life?
By an accident of timing this question comes almost exactly one year after I started blogging. My first post was April 28, 2004. I started out hoping I would be able to stick with it, which in retrospect should have been the least of my concerns. I've been planning a one-year anniversary post anyway, so I may as well use patterico's question as my lead.
The short answer to patterico's question is that I have become almost completely addicted to it. So much so, in fact, that I am now in the process of moving off of Blogger, a free service to a paid service.
A bit of background
I started blogging with a few objectives in mind:
- To help me organize and consolidate my thoughts on the issues of the day
- To make me a better writer. For years I've read books by the cartload, and had innumerable discussions with people. But it's one thing to toss an idea around in your head, and quite another to put it down on paper.
- I wanted to receive feedback and critique, which in turn would give me an opportunity to reevaluate my ideas.
- It forces me to think things through and, hopefully, make sure that my arguments are logical.
- Writing makes me a better debater. By that I don't necessarily mean "argue", although sometimes it comes down to that. Rather I've noticed that when engaged in discussion I can explain an idea better now that I've written about it.
If you're like me then you don't go around talking politics to everyone you meet. Certainly at work, where it seems we spend so much of our lives, I don't talk politics except perhaps with a - very - few trusted associates. And in daily life it's not something that get's discussed much, and when I do it's not in depth. Politics being as divisive as it is, and myself being so passionate about it, the last thing I want to do is to create unnecessary divisions and hard feelings.
Oh sure, there is always the occasional exception. But in general my intellectual experience has been confined to reading books and talking about them only occasionally with a few people.
With my family it's an entirely different matter. We talk politics almost everytime we meet. Everyone is a conservative, so any disagreement is usually over things like "how great a danger is Hillary?" or something like that. We're a pretty loud bunch, with everyone talking at once, kids running around, the whole bit. But we don't get together but once every month or so.
I've Found Them
So I don't talk politics or history with most people, but intellectually I know they're out there. After all, someone else must subscribe to National Review. Someone else must be buying Tom Sowell's books.
Sure, I read the Internet magazines like National Review Online and Frontpagemag. But when you can't really interact with the authors, it's all...distant. I don't want to say it's not real, but it's certainly not personal.
Blogging has allowed this interaction in a way I did not forsee when I started this project. The only blog I read when I started this was Andrew Sullivan and National Review's The Corner. Neither of these post comments, although you can send the author email. The level of interaction between bloggers and other people who simply comment was something that I did not anticipate at all and is the most rewarding part of the entire experience.
Finally, I've been able to meet people who share my beliefs - or most of them anyway - and interact with them in a way that I've long hoped for but was never able to realize. I've "met" some very interesting and smart people, and am much the better for it. I won't list names for fear of exclusion, but you know who you are.
My biggest problem now is finding time to do everything on the Internet that I want to do. I even co-blog on another site, Warm 'n Fuzzy Conserva-Puppies. I've accepted an invitation from Marvin Hutchens to co-author a "Threat Assessment" index in which we rank, track, and provide information about threats to our country.
I'd also be dishonest if I didn't just come right out and say that I'm darn proud of the work that I have done on my site. This thing has grown and changed in ways that I hoped it would and in ways I did not ancipate, but all of it has been good. I know it's not the best writing or analysis out there, but it's more than I've ever done before, and if I may say, some of it is pretty good. So there.
Thank you
Lastly, I want to thank all of you who are reading this now, and those of you who are regular readers. Thank you for stopping by and I hope to see you again.
Posted by Tom at April 14, 2005 11:00 AM
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