Jul 12, 2006
On Blogging
You know, I’ve been doing this blogging thing for well over six years now, and I like to think I’ve learnt a thing or two about blogging along the way.
Having a blog has helped me, variously:
- make new friends
- develop my writing
- meet my husband
- engage with different aspects of culture which tangentially helped me to move into and define several new roles within my company
- appear on radio in a number of continents
- get a column in a national newspaper
- develop thicker skin
- learn more than I would have otherwise about web design and CSS and so on (though you wouldn’t know it, looking at this mess – I know, I know, I’m going to sort it out, I swear…)
….and so on.
So, all in all, quite useful really. But all of these, while perfectly pleasant, are not the point of having a blog.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that they are all things which might have conceivably been achieved through other means, and that the blog was merely a device, not a cause, and therefore the point of having the blog all this time wasn’t really to cause all of that stuff to occur anyway.
So what was it?
Some people say that the point of blogging is to become famous.
Others swear the point of having a blog is to express your innermost soul to the world.
Still others think that the point of blogging is to ensure that the world knows exactly what you had for lunch today, yesterday and in fact every day.
But no. I’ve found the real point of blogging, the only real reason for keeping and maintaining a blog regularly over all these years.
And you know what it is?
The point of blogging is so I can keep tabs on when the flying ants come out in London every summer.
That’s it.
Over the years, I’ve written about all sorts of crap on this blog, from cyberculture to carrier bags, and most topics in between.
One thing, however, I seem to have mentioned annually without fail, is the coming of the flying ants to London’s streets – usually on the first really hot day after a period of cooler, wetter weather, when the cracks in the pavement erupt with winged little fuckers which flitter around trying desperately to mate in mid air (they call this a “social swarm” – this sounds to me like a metaphor and/or potential nickname for one of the early blogmeets we had for the early UKBlogging crew, back in t’day) before perishing underfoot (mostly).
From trawling my blog archives I can see the following pattern emerge:
| Year | Flying Ant Day in London |
| 2000 | 21 July |
| 2001 | 23 July |
| 2002 | 26 July |
| 2003 | 27 July |
| 2004 | 22 July |
| 2005 | 29 July |
| 2006 | Today, 12 July |
As you can see, while they seemed to be arriving later and later every year, they’ve put in an extra-early appearance this year, just to confuse us.
So there you have it. The point of maintaining a weblog is to track the activity of winged pests. Better than tracking my lunch details, I reckon.
To anyone thinking of starting a blog, look on this post and feel confident that if you keep it up diligently, in six years or so, you too will be able to look upon your mighty organ and smile with a sense of smugness that you are able to predict to within a couple of weeks when the flying ants will arrive in London.
And winning a bloggie or getting a publishing deal won’t give you that sort of satisfied glow, I can assure you.
