I had another blog before “Fear, Fun and Filoz.” The first entry in this one is “Return to blogging”, posted on March 29, 2008. As I began this one, I thought of the writing as a way of reflecting, considering, re-thinking and reviewing my days. It has definitely turned out to be exactly that.
Because of difficulties recently, I emailed every person on my own blog mailing list and asked if that person wanted to continue getting each post in email. About 10% of the old list said yes. There is a gadget on the blog web page that allows someone to subscribe to the postings. I have never used it and I don’t know how well, how conveniently it works, nor how many people, if any, use it. Google’s Blogger allows quick, free blogging and the settings for a blog you make include information about where those who have the “page” transmitted to their cellphones and computers are. My leading sources of viewers are the US, Russia and France but smaller numbers show up from all over the world.
This blog makes use of the Blogger service of Google but there are several alternatives, such as WordPress and others. Blogger allows my blog for no charge. I might incur some costs if it were to get a large readership but I doubt that is going to happen. I am not sure what qualifies as large. With this post, I will have 3117 posts. When I am learning about someone, such as Tara Westover, PhD (“Educated”) or Amit Sood, MD (“Mindfulness Redesigned”), I often look them up on Google, Amazon and Twitter. Much of the time, I find that the account has not been used for a year or more. There is nothing wrong with sparse and infrequent writing if the writer is not down on himself for laxity or some other accusation.
Twitter (I am “olderkirby” there) has changed to allow more pictures and sound, as have many other aspects of communication. “Podcasts”, audio files transmitted in whole or streamed continuously are another way to communicate, in this case, by voice alone. YouTube allows channels of videos but I haven’t made use of that other than this one:
Whether you consider a blog to be a diary, a journal, a bully pulpit or reflections on your life, as Michel de Montaigne did in the 1500’s, you may find your life richer and more socially connected if you write and put the result where it can be seen.
