NOTE: my favorite 4th quarter blog is "Retaliation for Bin Laden's Death" from May 14.
Well, this is it. The final blog of my junior year. I certainly have had an interesting relationship with my blog throughout this school year. Before I talk about how my blogging style has changed, let me talk about how my view of blogging in general has been changed throughout the past nine months.
My relationship with blogging has been a wavy one, figuratively and literally. I enjoy blogging when there is something newsworthy to blog about. For instance, I truly enjoyed writing the blog about Bin Laden's death. It allowed me to voice my opinion on something that was, and still is, a hot topic. Blogs like these don't happen weekly, though. There are some blogs that I write purely for the sake of my grade. When there isn't anything big happening in the news and I don't have anything meaningful to say, blogging can be a pain. I have to force words and ideas that i may not necessarily believe, and it is evident in some of my blogs. None of my blogs are masterpieces by any means, but I am proud of them nonetheless. However, there are a few where it is crystal clear that I half-assed the blog, and did not enjoy writing it at all. At the end of nine months of blogging, my view is this: blogging is a great way for one to voice their opinion, but the blogger should not be forced to blog. I feel that blogging is all about freedom, and the blogger should blog when they have something to say. One blog per week is, in my opinion, a tad bit constricting. There might be a week where nothing interesting happens, so what does the blogger do? Write a post that they are not passionate about. So, to generalize, blogs are great when the writer can control when to write them.
Now on to the content of my blogs. To be honest, not a whole lot has changed since my last meta post. I see a trend in my blogging style. During the first quarter, my blogging style went under massive change. Second quarter, I changed a fair amount, but considerably less than I did first quarter. Third quarter may have consisted of one or two changes in my blogging style, and that helped me settle in to the style I have now. Throughout the fourth quarter, my blogging has not changed at all. Rather than a comparison of my blogging style at different points throughout the year, I would like to critique the style that I have now.
If I could describe my blogging style with one word, it would be "unrefined". I know that this word has a somewhat negative connotation, but I view this aspect as a positive one. In my opinion, blogs aren't meant to be refined, polished, or perfected. They shouldn't be written in perfect English, and they shouldn't be too formal. As corny as this may sound, I think that a blog comes from one's heart. When people form thoughts and opinions, the don't do it with others in mind. You think what you feel, and your blog should mirror your thoughts. If you comb over your blog to get rid of grammatical errors, your blog will lose some of it's meaning. It won't be what you truly felt at the time you wrote it, so it won't be true to your thoughts. I feel that blogs are meant to be unrefined, and I am proud that my blog is not perfect. If a blog was perfect, than it would not be true to the author. No one is perfect, and hiding behind a perfect blog rather that showing who you are is a huge mistake.
Reed: "blogs are great when the writer can control when to write them." I hope you realize that you DO have control over them. If you wanted to write 5 in a week on bin Laden, go for it! You can save drafts in your account. Wish you would have expressed these frustrations earlier in the year.
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