How do you blog, asks Frank Paynter, a huggy bear of a blogger I met at Harvard’s first BloggerCon.
Late at night, usually after midnight, when my almost ninety-year old mother is asleep and I’ve unwound by watching some mindless tv program I’ve taped, then I read my email, trash my spam, check out my son’s new blog. And the NY Times, The Progressive Review, Truthout. And then, maybe, I blog.
But first I turn on the full-spectrum light on the wall near my computer. It’s a blank wall that I face, a white wall with no windows. My big, flat-screened monitor is my window, and the light feeds my illusion of an open space. I sit in my chair, wheel back and forth to loosen my thoughts. It doesn’t always work; I seldom have much energy left for thinking. I wheel back and forth, get up to feed the cat, get a drink of water.
I sit and wheel and watch the screen without the full coffee cup that sustains most bloggers. I don’t drink coffee. I drink tea. But not when I’m blogging
I used to read other weblogs before I posted on my own so that I could join “conversations.” I don’t do that much any more because I don’t have the time and energy to fully participate. I used to leave lots of comments on others’ blogs. I don’t do that very often now either. I liked it when my blogging universe was small and manageable. There’s just so many bloggers out there now, so much, so many. It all overwhelms me.
So, instead, I just sit and blog what I think, what I think about. I blog for me on my own weblog.. I blog to continue putting out connections to family and friends I no longer see much of. I blog for whoever finds me for whatever reason.
I post right into the Moveable Type template that my son set up for me. If it were any more complicated, I wouldn’t bother; but MT and b!X makes it a cinch. I type while I think, without first doing a draft. I try to proofread, but at 1 a.m. or such, I usually miss all kinds of typos. So the next morning, before my mother gets up and needs to be fed, reassured, reminded, recreated, I go in and find and fix them.
And then I go in and trash my comment spam, of which there is a constant flow. Just one more way the blogging universe has become so overwhelming.
How do I blog, Frank Paynter asks. I blog wearily and wishfully. I blog isolated and interested and intentioned.
I blog the way I live.
Found that account most interesting. When reading a blog I often try to imagine the blogger and the circumstances under which they produce their posts. Mine, also, are usually published at around midnight. For me, blogging doesn’t feel quite so frivolous if it’s done in time subtracted from my sleeping quota.
I love to blog at dawn’s early light …