The Blog
April 10, 2002
7:27 a.m.
At the risk of alienating people, let me get something straight. I do not blog. I have never blogged, and I do not intend to start now. I do not like the term, actually. Blog. It's strange, isn't it? Kind of an ugly word, actually. I mean, what exactly is it to blog? Oh, I understand a little. It's hip. It'z jazzy-zoom cool. It's so easy, and fun, too! What it really is, I guess, is phase III (or maybe phase IV?) of the Web communications thing. What do I mean by phase III/IV? Well ... As I see it, phase I was the original collection of 10, then 40, then 80 or so journals written primarily by Web developers. They were artsy, and they were intimate. They included confessions--and that's what they really were. Confessions. They included folks like Maggy Donea's "Water," which was Cool Site of the Year once. I was not part of phase I -- I was part of phase II. Phase II was a bunch of copycats, basically. We copied layout schemes and graphical presentations. We copied writing styles and color schemes. But among the differences was that Phase I was internally directed--meaning those 100 sites were originally written for and read by the same 100 people--phase II was originally directed at a bigger audience, and done for a wider variety of reasons...which is not too surprising when you take into account that the first wave was a few hundred people, while the second grew rapidly top probably a million. (Who really knows, eh? ... That's the beauty of the web). My reason for doing this, as I have stated previously, was to make my efforts public to the 5-10 other people who cared about me. This, in turn, made sure I worked because I did not want to disappoint these people. So the site gave me this pressure that was helpful in achieving a goal. Now we're into this thing where a thousand little cliques hang together. Blog groups, maybe. That's what the "blog" thing seems like to me, anyway. A group of personal sites that exist merely for the purpose of being intellectually chatty with other blogs in some almost superior wort of way--which, I guess, is fine, but I'll admit I don't understand. Don't get me wrong, here, either. I know I fall into periods where I'm riffing off other people's commentary. But that is not the purpose of my place, and I think that's beyond obvious to anyone who reads it for even a little while. "Blog-space" today carries a lot of the same baggage for me that fraternities carried when I was in college. It probably goes without saying that I was never in a fraterinty. Of course, a lot of blogs seem to exist merely for the ability to say things that could probably go without saying, so ... anyway. The purpose of my place is still to keep me writing. Yes, it is. The only difference is that I don't need it as much for that purpose as I used to. But in its place a new purpose has grown, one that is equally interesting, and (to my odd way of thinking) equally valuable. This journal is the documentation of my path. Wherever it leads me, and whenever it is done, Daily Persistence will be here to let me understand how it all happened. I hear you. Whoopty-big-howdy-do. Okay. It's not much. But it is a purpose...I mean, beyond just blabbing. So, no, I don't blog. What I do is keep a journal. This is what Daily Persistence has always been, and it's what it will continue to be as long as I am around and keeping it up. I code it by hand. I write it off the cuff. I play with the design whenever I'm intrigued. I'm not sure why I'm thinking about this right now. I know I've read little bits and pieces on a few other sites recently about the journaling community, and the pressure to produce journal entries. I guess I'm just angsty about the social elitism that seems to be springing up in the "blog" community. There's something wrong about feeling pressure to produce entries when more useful stories remain to be written. But, perhaps this is a different entry. (The definition of irony (?): a useless entry about how bad useless entries are. Oh, the sweetness of joy!) Don't worry, I'm sure I'll get over it ... just as I'm sure that it wouldn't matter if I got over it or not. Anyway, there it is--for the record and all.   Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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