Blogging has changed my life* in many ways. The most significant one was that it has given me a sense of community and allowed me to make many wonderful friends (and I can say with the certainty of one who has experienced many "blogger meet ups" [12 posts in that category] that these friendships are very real and "translate" wonderfully well to face-to-face interactions).
Most importantly, though, blogging has allowed me to express myself -- even if most of the time it feels as if I'm talking only to myself, it's still useful (that's why I've written on journals for over 25 years now and I continue to do so). It began as a profound need of an expatriate mother (of a toddler and infant) who had just moved to a new city to connect to other people, then quickly morphed into the desperate mother-graduate student trying to finish a dissertation and get the Ph.D. and looking for other grad. student mothers. I found them all right and it was amazing to read about their struggles.
Anyway... blogging became something central to my life.
Then came other social media. Orkut, first -- because I'm Brazilian and for years before facebook was the rage (well, I think MySpace was already big then) most Brazilians embraced orkut (now owned by Google) and I was able to reconnect to long lost friends from 30 years ago (25 years at the time! ;-). I'm still there, but I hardly ever check anything or anybody. Then came facebook. I joined and the strangest thing happened. First, I connected to family and friends -- including people from graduate school, and I also got connected with all of my closest blogging friends (if I'm not fb friends with you yet and you'd like to be, just send my an email, I'll give you my "real name" :-D).
That was strange. Two parts of my life that hardly ever touched now were there all together -- the friends from Brazil, from church, from the university and... "from the internets." And what happened since I joined facebook is that I've always felt WAY more comfortable blogging than posting updates there. (I blogged about this a few times).
Now, I was just reading a recent post by Laura (Apt. 11D) in which she commented on her disappointment with the New Yorker's profile of facebook's founder. In the end of her post, she writes:
In a side note, I have to marvel at the power of Facebook. Facebook is now my biggest referral. More people show up here via a link on Facebook than show up from a link from a blogger. Those links bring in new readers. It has changed the way I blog. I now think about how I can package up an idea, so it's appealing on a Facebook page.
And I commented back:
Well, your comment about Facebook bringing in traffic/new readers to your blog made me conclude that my already tiny blog is hopeless because I refuse to acknowledge its existence in fb.
Mostly because I have a bunch (maybe 10-15) graduate school friends I'm in touch with in there. Even my advisor is my fb friend. And I've blogged extensively about graduate school.** I wonder if anyone would go and read the archives, though (I do that, I've read part of yours e.g.). So... yeah, I'd rather continue my semi-anonymous blogging for a while longer while I sort out this semi-anonymity thing.
I'm thinking that if we move to [GA] I may decide to disclose my location fully & allow readers to find out my real name more easily if they so desire. Then, maybe I will lose my inhibitions about talking about the blog in facebook. OK, I'll stop here, there's more I want to say about this, so I'll probably should go write a blog post.
The blog post is already here. I'm not promising anything, but I have this feeling that I want to "integrate" my life more from now on. Part of a new beginning, if you will. I have no plans to edit this blog's archives, what I wrote is what I've lived and I stand by it. I think I will feel better and more "whole" once I can openly "own" my blog in a forum like facebook. Not having been published in Mama PhD gave me a chance to remain semi-anonymous for a couple more years, but I think the time will come when I will feel confident enough not to think that this blog can pose any threats to my "academic career" -- if there ever is one ;-). And I can't wait to "take the final plunge."
Oh, and last, but not least? Facebook, Twitter, and other social media seem to be so big that people are already talking about them totally replacing blogging. Too bad. I still feel that blogging is a very effective medium that allows serious reflection in addition to superficial musings. Only the latter can be done in the more popular social media. What to do you think? I hope that blogging doesn't go away anytime soon and, like Laura said, I hope to be able to use Facebook & Twitter to my blog's advantage.
* I can't believe I wrote the "How Blogging Changed My Life" post only two years into blogging, wow.
** Long time readers will know that I've shared lots of my struggles with my advisor, committee members and my doubts about academia in the blog. My unpublished essay (which I had submitted for the anthology Mama, PhD), in particular, deals with sensitive topics that have to do with my department.
I think that Facebook and Twitter have changed blogging. Just look at what Laura wrote -- she thinks about "packaging" what she wants to write to make it stand out on Facebook. I don't think blogging will go away but it has changed and will continue to change because now more people are focused on packaging and branding and advertising and PR and referrals and blog conferences and a whole host of other things that define blogging FOR people and give them less room to define it for themselves. These are not bad things. The fact that women can now exert some power in the consumer economy (by earning money, by networking and getting jobs, by participating in ad campaigns, by being sponsored to do terrific things) is pretty dang cool.
ReplyDeleteI also receive a lot of Facebook referrals but a whole ton of my readers read me less because they have limited amounts of online time and they spend it on Facebook where they can get more bang from their buck.