{"id":944,"date":"2013-07-17T20:51:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T20:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/07\/why-blog.html"},"modified":"2013-07-17T20:51:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T20:51:00","slug":"why-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/07\/why-blog.html","title":{"rendered":"Why blog?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Thanks, Ann, for the <\/span>mention (quoting from an e-mail I sent over to her)<\/span><\/a>!\u00a0 <\/span>\u2014 and thanks to everyone who stopped by and left a comment.<\/span><\/div>\n

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In her comments, she implicitly asks the question of why I\u2019m having a go at blogging (or, more generally, why anyone ventures into the blogging world).\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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For quite a while now, I\u2019ve been writing letters to the editor. \u00a0<\/span>Sometimes they get published \u2013 mostly they don\u2019t.\u00a0 <\/span>(Come to think of it, it\u2019s been a while since they\u2019ve published one.)\u00a0 <\/span>Now, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s a quota, and I simply bang out too many such letters. \u00a0<\/span>And the Trib also likes to print nice sentimental thoughts about the seasons, or praising teachers\/parents\/volunteers, etc.\u00a0 <\/span>But to a large degree I just can\u2019t get my point across in the short, pithy way that a letters-to-the-editor editor is looking for. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Sometimes I\u2019ll write anyway, knowing that it\u2019ll 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.\u00a0 <\/span>Sometimes, I\u2019ll 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.<\/span><\/div>\n

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But part of the purpose of the blog is to have an alternative to these unpublished letters, and have an alternative to write about\/discuss topics in politics and in the news generally.\u00a0 <\/span>At the very least, I\u2019ll have something of an archive, a bit like journaling for a politics geek.<\/span><\/div>\n

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So that\u2019s purpose #1.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Beyond that, it\u2019s a bit of indulging in a fantasy.\u00a0 <\/span>Not fantasy football, but \u201cfantasy op-ed writing.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I wouldn\u2019t say that being an op-ed columnist was my childhood dream, but it is the section of the paper I turn to first.\u00a0 <\/span>(Yes, I still read an actual newspaper<\/i>.)\u00a0 <\/span>Hence, the \u201cmini-essays\u201d rather than just links (there are plenty of blogs that are chock-full of links, anyway).<\/span><\/div>\n

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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 \u2014 and have<\/i> a point in the first place.\u00a0 <\/span>The point of the mini-essays is to have something to say that\u2019s not just a duplicate of Krauthhammer or Instapundit or Althouse, whether it\u2019s a new idea entirely or a somewhat different take on it, because then there wouldn\u2019t be a point to it.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Oh, and a 4th<\/sup> 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. \u00a0<\/span>Though I don\u2019t know how ambitious I\u2019ll be here \u2013 ever since I\u2019ve been married, my husband has been in charge of technology.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Obviously, there\u2019s more reward to it if some actually reads this!\u00a0 <\/span>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.<\/span><\/div>\n

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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\u2019m 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 \u201chooked\u201d on a new blog), and I get my local and international news from the newspaper (Chicago Tribune \u2013 which is partly behind a paywall now) and The Economist.\u00a0 <\/span>So I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m 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.\u00a0 <\/span>At the same time, too, there\u2019s plenty to talk about from blogs I follow and articles facebook friends link to.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks, Ann, for the mention (quoting from an e-mail I sent over to her)!\u00a0 \u2014 and thanks to everyone who stopped by and left a comment. In her comments, she implicitly asks the question of why I\u2019m having a go at blogging (or, more generally, why anyone ventures into the blogging world).\u00a0 For quite a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy blog?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"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\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/07\/why-blog.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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