What Blogging is about for me

Every now and again I get engaged with by someone who asks me why I'm not like [insert name of blogger here] and blog every day. My response is usually that unlike [use name inserted earlier] I am someone who blogs when it feels right.

When I started I bumped into someone who was, at the time, one of the leading lights in the blogosphere and they were very kind about my scribbles. We got talking and as we entered into various topics of the the day I noticed that they would scribble bits of it into their little notebook for use on the the blog later. A year on we met again and as we talked the notebook appeared again and scribbles were made. The scribbler, noticing that I was looking at them scribble as we spoke told me of the curse that blogging can bring as the need for content now obviously drove them. 'I can't hold a conversation or hear things without feeling the need for notes so that I can use anything interesting later,' they confessed and followed that with. 'In fact the blog drives me rather than me driving it. I have become its slave!'

What was interesting was that a few months later they mentioned this on their blog as they announced their decision to disappear for a while - and since then have vanished from the blogosphere (under that alias at least) apparently for good.

My latest conversation ended up with the question, 'Why don't you publish every day?' something which brought the response that, 'As just a boring cleric, what would I'd write about?' That said, I do blog every day as I publish the daily office after I have done t myself to encourage those I do vocations work (and members of our church and others with whom I have relationships) to get into the habit of a daily discipline of prayer.*

But this blog exists for me to internally dialogue with meetings, issues and other things encountered during the course of my day. I am not too concerned with looking at the trending issue and writing on them to add my voice and (says he cynically) to attract an audience for the sake of having one. Those with whom I engage, read and, converse over the issues that come up (more often than not by means other than the comments, which is sad because most are clever and funny types who should be read!) and this is what this place is.

It is a glimpse inside the addled and confused brain of an almost average dog collar. I meet someone and discuss something and then come back and reflect (usually over a brew) on the whole shebang before rushing out to fill the buffer with more stuff from the next encounter.

What bores me is the fact that so many bloggers all comment on the same stuff, albeit with their own spin, and end up being a fairly second rate version of the daily papers or the religious press. What I want is to find real people with real views who excite, challenge and even cause concern and panic (a reason one friend reads the blog just for that!).

So there we are - what you get is often a splurge of the brain and five (sometimes ten) minutes of bashing the keyboard as I lay out my encounters, pacify my frustrations and tether my demons. It's rarely pretty, frequently weird but one hundred percent me.

you're never alone with a clone!

* What makes this fun was the person who asked what the point of my blog was because, 'All you do is post the daily office!' Their response when I pointed out that there was 'much more than that in my blog' was, 'Oh, I wouldn't know - I don't generally read it!' Always good to have the informed opinion innit? Of course, were my the daily office to be the only thing I put on the blog, were it to encourage people to have a solid prayer and Bible reading practice I would still consider it to be worthwhile.