Why blog?

Last updated on: July 17, 2013 at 8:51 pm by Jane the Actuary

Why blog? 2013-07-17T20:51:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Thanks, Ann, for the mention (quoting from an e-mail I sent over to her)! — and thanks to everyone who stopped by and left a comment.

In her comments, she implicitly asks the question of why I’m having a go at blogging (or, more generally, why anyone ventures into the blogging world).

For quite a while now, I’ve been writing letters to the editor. Sometimes they get published – mostly they don’t. (Come to think of it, it’s been a while since they’ve published one.) Now, I don’t know if there’s a quota, and I simply bang out too many such letters. And the Trib also likes to print nice sentimental thoughts about the seasons, or praising teachers/parents/volunteers, etc. But to a large degree I just can’t get my point across in the short, pithy way that a letters-to-the-editor editor is looking for.

Sometimes I’ll write anyway, knowing that it’ll be ignored, because something in an article in the paper bugs me and I know that the 15 minutes banging something out before I start my workday will save me a lot of irritation mentally composing a letter for the rest of the morning. Sometimes, I’ll just save such a letter as a draft, with the process of writing at least getting a little of the irritation out of my system.

But part of the purpose of the blog is to have an alternative to these unpublished letters, and have an alternative to write about/discuss topics in politics and in the news generally. At the very least, I’ll have something of an archive, a bit like journaling for a politics geek.

So that’s purpose #1.

Beyond that, it’s a bit of indulging in a fantasy. Not fantasy football, but “fantasy op-ed writing.” I wouldn’t say that being an op-ed columnist was my childhood dream, but it is the section of the paper I turn to first. (Yes, I still read an actual newspaper.) Hence, the “mini-essays” rather than just links (there are plenty of blogs that are chock-full of links, anyway).

And, third, the goal is to work on my writing, and challenge myself to write in a clear, focused way, to get to the point — and have a point in the first place. The point of the mini-essays is to have something to say that’s not just a duplicate of Krauthhammer or Instapundit or Althouse, whether it’s a new idea entirely or a somewhat different take on it, because then there wouldn’t be a point to it.

Oh, and a 4th goal is just the project of teaching myself how to use the blogging platform, how to (eventually) make the template more visually appealing, add photographs, etc. Though I don’t know how ambitious I’ll be here – ever since I’ve been married, my husband has been in charge of technology.

Obviously, there’s more reward to it if some actually reads this! And having actual, non-imaginary readers would serve to keep me honest and focused on writing for an audience instead of just rants about what irritate dme in the paper that morning.

One thing that will make this project a bit difficult is that I get my politics from a few major blogs (hence, the blogroll is only a mini-blogroll), in part as a temptation-avoidance approach (that is, I’m lousy at time management, have spent too many nights just bouncing from one blog to another, and at some point decided that I have to avoid getting “hooked” on a new blog), and I get my local and international news from the newspaper (Chicago Tribune – which is partly behind a paywall now) and The Economist. So I don’t know if I’m going to, when I want to discuss something in the news, hunt for the same article in wire service/online form, or just discuss without links. At the same time, too, there’s plenty to talk about from blogs I follow and articles facebook friends link to.

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