This, That, and the Other
Like a crap cat-burgler, I return to the scene of the crime. And in doing so, you find me in reflective mood. I was puzzling over why I hadn’t blogged for so long, and the few blogs I’ve written lately feel like catch-up, reading as they’d been written, somehow obligated to do so. So I read some of my first paragraphs on here from 2003, and 2004, trying to rediscover what if anything had fuelled that enthusiasm.
What was different then? Why did I feel the need, enjoy even, to write about everyday things and thoughts. I guess the obvious answer is the nature of the internet itself. Updating a blog was the easiest way to keep in touch with a few friends and let each other what we had been up to. Now of course everyone (and their dog, mum, boss and ex-girlfriend) is on facebook. Or Twitter. Microblogging. As apparently even writing a few paragraphs is too time-consuming for the nuevo-internetista. Sad indictment, but true all the same.
Blogging in 2009 can seem to be the prevail of the political types. Those activists bent on changing the world from the comfort of their office chair. Or much worse still those Party cheerleaders who somehow juggle flying the flag for the “new media order” while scrambling for acceptance infront of the cameras of the cosy Aunty Beeb or scribbling pieces for the crusty old Telegraph. Are we already squinting back at a sepia-tinged bygone era? Whither the “I got pissed and fell over and ripped me slacks in the street” blogs? Why blog when you can micro-blog?
Perhaps it’s none of this. Perhaps nothing’s changed but me. Perhaps there are blogs out there updated regularly by the bloody-kneed drunk documenting his last night out, extolling his latest music tastes, typing away in torn trousers. I’m certainly more aware, or more cautious as to who might be reading my blog now. For me the internet feels a much more open, less cliquey place. My ambling prose at the arse end of 2003 would have been read by (at least I imagined) just a handful of folk. Do I have to be more thoughtful and less candid? If so, is it worth it? Who am I writing for, you or me?
Anyway, I hope you bear with me, while I decide how to continue with this blog in the future. I won’t shut it down or stop updating it completely as I still like it being there. My own personal toilet wall to graffiti at will. And of course there’ll always be Stav’s Top 10 albums of the year. So throw it into your RSS reader or whatever app you use on your iPhone and put your feet up, because I could be a while yet. And if it really has been too long, you could always remind me via a tweet.
