A Blogging Abecedaria
Today is a good day to sit back and look at the havoc blogging has wreacked on my life:
- As of today this blog has been viewed more than 100,000 times. (About 100 to 200 views per day)
- I have posted 748 posts since December 2005. (I try to limit myself to six posts per week.)
- This blog has been commented on 3,365 times (4 to 1 comment-to-post ratio)
- Technorati says this blog ranks 88,435 in blogdom.
I spend most mornings between 6AM and 7AM blogging. And I keep tabs on my blog and the feeds throughout the day either on my computer or cell phone. People like Suzanne McCarthy and Esteban Vásquez are household names. Blogging has influenced my Bible translation. Blogging has affected my career path. Blogging has become an addiction.
Last week there was a flurry of blog posts about “Why I blog.” I haven’t had time to do my own navel-gazing until now. In true blogging spirit I’ve decided to turn this into an opportunity for link love (links are generously sprinkled through this post) and also to tag several other bloggers as a meme (oh, blessed memes!).
Below are the beginnings of an abecedaria W of reasons why I blog. Help me complete the list by adding your own comments or link to this post from your blog.
Blogging from A to Z
- Agenda: I’ve got several and a blog is a place to promote it.
- Boredom: African culture despite what you might think is maddeningly homogenous. Blogging exposes me to the big world and all the weird people and ideas that exist out there.
- Cabal: Over time I’ve developed a close group of virtual friendships with people I would never know otherwise.
- Entertainment: I love to laugh and make people laugh. Blogging gives me the chance to flout my flapdoodle before a wider audience.
- Feeds: Feed me! Something new on the RSS feed every time I check.
- Ideation and Input: My StrengthsFinder Profile showed that I am an idea-hamster and someone who has to know everything right now. Blogging feeds these “strengths.”
- Lingamish: Blogging pseudonymously has allowed me to try out a different personality and discover that I is in fact me.
- Menagerie: The blogs that I follow on Bloglines are a sort of Global Menagerie (some might say Circus Sideshow). I don’t read them because they think like me. I read them because they are distinctive voices (and they’re all decent spellers).
- Statistics: Blogging is like a big game of Dungeons & Dragons. I love keeping track of visitors, comments and trackbacks.
- Trackbacks and Technorati: “Visits” to your blog is an extremely unreliable indicator of your actual influence. Comments, more so. But blessed trackbacks. If somebody mentions my blog on theirs I get a nice warm feeling.
There you have it. A good start on a blogging abecedaria. Can you add any letters to the alphabet soup? Leave a comment below.
And I tag these people with the question, “Why do you blog?”: John Hobbins, Chris Tilling, Michael Kruse and Eddie Arthur.
Is there any significance behind the particular text you chose to link to my blog?
Serendipity.
Understanding: If I only read and occasionally comment, am I considered a blogger? If the answer is yes, I blog because in my insignificant little world I see things through a very narrow filter. By reading your blog and others I have opened my mind to a whole different way of seeing and understanding things, such as your post on teaching about evolution in your home school. Some day I will get my own blog going, and find out how to do a spell check when commenting.
Love you son.
DAD
I’m afraid I’m not creative enough to contribute to the alphabet soup, but I sure enjoyed what you wrote in this post! You’ve also reminded that Kevin Edgecomb tagged me with this “Why do you blog?” thing a while back, and I should get to it sometime.
Here’s hoping for 100,000 more views, and 748 more posts. Cheers!
Dad! Come to Africa!
Esteban, quit your joking. (”not creative enough”)
D
Got nothing better to do: I blog because I got nothing better to do.
Have nothing better to do: See ‘G’
Justice: There isn’t enough of it in the world, and blogging is a way to bring it about.
Knowledge: A lot of scholars blog and I’ve picked up something of value from all that I’ve read.
Nothing better to do: See ‘H’ which will refer you to ‘G’
Omaha: Is a city in Nebraska. I’ve never been there personally, but I bet if I keep blogging someone who has been will leave a comment sooner or later.
Practice makes Perfect: Blogging is practice for writing. Eventually I plan to publish a book and become incredibly rich.
Q: Is a mythical document/sayings source that many bloggers believe in. I have a great laugh every time I read about this fairy tale for scholars on someone’s blog.
Really have nothing better to do: See ‘N’ which will refer you to ‘H’ which will refer you to ‘G’
I leave U to Z to a blogger more creative than me.
That comment is so funny I might just put you back on my blogroll.
U: Yes, “you”, my readers for whom I am blogging.
V: Virtual, if not virtuous, readers.
W: Who are they?
X: An unknown quantity, in the sense that won’t be known by perusing those stats.
Y: Why indeed do we blog?
Z: Sleep, the end result of too much bad blogging.
So much for the alphabet!
I am actually getting more links and fewer comments these days. I wonder what that means. Maybe it’s “He saying something that sounds important enough to link to it, but I really have no idea what the hell he is really saying.” Hmmm…
Drew,
That’s exactly it!
Okay, then. I think I’ll employ my creativity and transform “People like Suzanne McCarthy and Esteban Vásquez are household names” into “Esteban Vázquez is a household name,” so as to include it in my Contextless, Yet Priceless, Endorsements.
(And of course, my exclusion of Suzanne implies nothing other than the fact that the endorsements are suppose to be about ME. I mean, I did just call her “the divine Suzanne McCarthy” in a recent post!)
oh, just glad that you put the adjective “weird” closer to Eddie’s first link than to mine. An abecedaria W of reasons is just for that.
Well, I’ve known Eddie longer so I can be less subtle about insulting him.