WEB101 - Learning Portfolio, Week 5 - Blogging

I'm a bit late with this week's reflections - school holidays plus a couple of other "life experiences" is making things a bit tough...

This week's task was about blogging which if I'm honest, I always thought was more about cluttering up the Internet than contributing anything useful. Howevever, I'm now starting to feel slightly swayed. So much so, that I've just resurrected an old personal blog, which I'm interested to see if I continue with...

OK... several hours later and I've now finished all the reading and Activities for the Blogging module... and it turns out I'm not as swayed as I thought! Here's my carefuly-considered answer to one of the Activity questions:

...with the greatest respect to blog-lovers everywhere, (and I'm probably in the minority here!) - I'm still not completely swayed by the whole blogging thing. While it's true that technology nowadays allows anybody who wants a blog to create one very easily, and to have the opportunity to have a voice, I think their usefulness is still dependent on an individual's ability to find something to say that interests at least one other person. :>

I have a couple of blogs that I've used for various purposes over the years, ultimately all personal. Truth be told though, I write carefully, always conscious that some future audience may read what I've written and view it differently to what I currently intend. Yes, I've learned about myself along the way, but I could probably have learned the same things by writing exactly what I REALLY thought in a Word document on my hard drive. What I actually feel like I'm doing by writing a blog is creating carefully-constructed cyber-clutter that isn't 100% me, that nobody else much cares about but me. It's like that old saying about "if a tree falls down in the woods and nobody hears it, has it really fallen down?". So I'm hard-pressed to say that my own blogs are contributing anything much at all!

While I acknowledge that there are some very good blogs where the cream has indeed risen to the top, I wonder just how many blogs exist that nobody has or will ever read. I think there's a reason why certain people become successful authors or journalists or even bloggers, where most other people don't - because they have a genuine ability. :>

Having said that - I do like the idea of citizen journalism and gatewatching and I can see the place that blogs play in that. I just don't think everybody needs to be doing it. :>

'nuff said :>