31 December 2007: Weblog Review

31 December 2007: Weblog Review

With only six weeks before this weblog is thee years old, I have many observations. Most obviously, I have maintained writing the weblog. Sometimes I have written only once in a few months. On other occasions I have written more than one posting each day. This accords with writing my personal journal. I imagined that writing this weblog would reduce the frequency at which I wrote personal journal entries. However, the reverse seems to be true, the more I write, the more there is to write. To be precise, the more I write, the more things I notice that I consider to be worth writing about. This dated postscript also points to some processes I have chosen to adopt: to add postscripts to existing postings; to amend and augment existing postings, improving and enriching them conceptually and in terms of their language; to publish unfinished postings, leaving them in the public domain until I am ready to finish them; the dates of publication do not necessarily reflect the dates of entries. I recognise that these processes move this weblog towards being a website, about which I feel reasonably comfortable. I am also comfortable about moving particular postings, once they are sufficiently complete, onto my website, for example regarding the use of politically correct language. A much larger topic that I have been developing in this weblog, about Green issues, is in the slow process of being moved onto a website of its own. This point also highlights that I have started three other weblogs: a family weblog (Sound Signs) to which Janet and Jemima also make occasional contributions; a University-based professional counselling weblog (Subceptions); and a much more edgy scratchpad for nascent ideas, a weblog that I keep private. The project, involving four weblogs and three websites (I also manage a sizable website about counselling for the University) is, in all probability, about creating an essay base. (I am a Commonwealth pamphleteer three and a half centuries too late.) Unlike in my personal journal, in which I write carefully but not self-consciously, here in these weblogs I am aware of how my writing may be understood or misunderstood. I do not value having to be online to make a posting, not only because getting online is not always easy, but also preferring the spontaneity of pen and paper. On the other hand, I like that what I write is saved in electronic format, and consequently is available to all the advantages open to electronic text.

When I started this weblog I had already rejected the abbreviation 'blog'. My dislike for the abbreviation has deepened: whoever coined the word would appear to have an undeveloped auditory appreciation of the English language: block, bloke, blob, blot, bodge, bog, log, hog, blubber, plug, plod. These are not words that I would choose as auditory neighbours to a medium as versatile and dynamic as online journalling. Further, the word 'blog', as distinct from the abbreviation (it seems that few people realise that the word is an abbreviation), has no obvious relationship with anything to do with writing. I thought of several alternatives, but each already has a bona fide claim made by an alternative meaning.