I’ve been blogging for eight years now, a small stretch of time for some bloggers, I know, but for me, those years seem to have covered life-times, and indeed I have actually crossed over into another life-time in those years, thanks to blogging.
Back then I wrote that a friend had queried how truthful my blogs were. Do you have a Bloggers License, she asked?
No, that was exactly how it happened, I answered. I thought about this. I wrote then that after three months of blogging I could see some patterns, and I still feel the same now. Back then I said that as far as I could see, Bloggers write the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth, in the interests of good taste, and other people’s feelings.
So for me, Bloggers License is still being able to choose to write what we want and when we want- unlike the grindstone of journalism.
Bloggers Temptation is to write too much and too often for followers to keep up.
Bloggers Fatigue is to get behind with reading other people’s Blogs, and failing therefore to keep the other half of the Bloggers Contract – ‘I engage to encourage you in the same way that you never fail to encourage me’.
Bloggers Heaven is to open the computer and find Likes and Comments and Followings sprinkled like confetti all over the Inbox, and winking through all those other Blogs waiting to be read and enjoyed. Bloggers Heaven is also looking at Stats and seeing not just a high spike, but a lofty plateau of readers every day. If only.
Bloggers Hell is to open the computer and find nothing but other Blogs, and then open Stats and find only a dribble of readers. Hell, indeed.
Bloggers Hell leads to Bloggers Despair. Feeling that I am a failure. Feeling that I have nothing of value to say to the world. The world does not want to hear what I have to say. The world is passing me by. I write because I love it, but this is like starving in a garret with no-one to appreciate my literary gems…
Blogger’s World is a place where most people write grammatical, entertaining, interesting, inspiring prose or poetry. Subjects may cover personal highs and lows, current affairs, beauty, politics, history, spirituality or any other topics which intrigue, amuse, or engage the Blogger. Many Bloggers have a passion which they communicate, or a long running project, like the Camino Trail, getting a book or a play published, running a farm, or reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Most people (except me) have a theme which people know to expect when they visit a Blogger’s web-site. And there are also Bloggers who share their wonderful photography, the sort of artistry that I drag into the To Keep box.
Bloggers seem to have common characteristics. They seem to be intelligent, often committed to preserving the environment, devoted to animals and concerned with social justice. They are sincere and witty and have a sense of fun. Bloggers notice and enjoy the small things in life. Many enjoy the good things in life, like food, beauty, flowers, music, gardens, architecture and antiques. They are uniformly courteous, kind, committed to high ideals, and often to spiritual growth. If anyone asks for help, they are swamped with responses from Bloggers who really care. Bloggers are good people.
I wonder if Bloggers are the cutting edge of the wave of the new consciousness that the world needs to move to another level of thought and awareness. It’s awareness and commitment that the world needs in order to move to the next stage of our civilisation and growth. It’s only by thought and respect that we’ll solve the problems that challenge us to take the next step, and it seems to me that Bloggers are the sort of people who each take individual responsibility for their corner of the world – themselves. So the Bloggers World is a sort of alternative new world that we inhabit.
This is an addendum, because the first comment which arrived today was from a friend. I had forgotten to mention Bloggers Friendships. I have never met this friend, just as I have never met so many other beautiful friends I’ve met through blogging, one in Canada, another in Cornwall, Arizona and Colorado, Washington and Melbourne, France and Germany, Australia and India, Scotland and Wales, Singapore and South Africa … we’ve shared our lives and our pasts, our children and our memories, our recipes, and deep respect. These connections are one of the most treasured aspects of blogging.
Bloggers End: this is a situation that few of us know anything about – much the same as we know little about our passing into the next world. There is little research into the demise of the Blogger. Does she just fade out, obliterate the Blog (how?), just stop clicking on Like, or stop writing the Blog? These are all huge questions that every Blogger will one day face. But until this great Unknown state of consciousness overtakes us, we don’t know the answers. And will we ever? If Bloggers stop communicating how will we ever know? Will some brave soul send back messages from the other world, that cruel world where people scoff at Bloggers? There are still unsolved riddles even in the great World of Blogging.
Bloggers Nightmare is the horror of opening the in-box and finding it overflowing with dozens of blogs to read when you’ve neglected Blogging Housekeeping, and have neither read the blogs you follow, answered all the precious comments, acknowledged new followers or likes, and failed to delete the various spam items that creep in.
On the other hand, Bloggers Delight are those wonderful comments, especially those written with such encouragement and appreciation and expression of spirit, that you feel privileged to live in the same world as the writers. This is the bliss of blogging, to know that you’ve been understood, that like minds are on the same journey, and to feel and know the truth of that ancient cliche that birds of a feather flock together, even among five hundred and twelve million bloggers around the world.
In my case, this is a literal truth. An intelligent, sensitive, exquisite soul became a follower, his comments became letters, his letters, skype conversations, and finally, he left his life and country and friends and family and profession, and came to join me in a new life we began in a remote forest. That was nearly five years ago. We are both still blogging, and both living in what could be called Bloggers Bliss!
Food for Gourmets
The painkillers for a bad back have sabotaged any hope of eating, and no-one wants to share a recipe for the thin bland watery soup which is all I am consuming at the moment! (But good for my figure, I hope)
Food for Thought
The world is a like a huge city reflected in a mirror. So too, the universe is a huge reflection of yourself in your own consciousness. Yoga Vasishta, ancient Vedic text, quoted by Dipak Chopra in Synchro Destiny
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