Had an interesting conversation with our Presbytery youthworker yesterday. I asked if he blogged and he said no, he hadn't yet got into it. His comment was that he wasn't sure he had anything much worth saying. I remember feeling much the same when I first tried blogging. Well, actually, not so much that I had nothing to say, but more that my thoughts weren't fully formed, hadn't been properly researched, needed more polishing. I guess coming from an academic background my default position was that writing something involved sharing information and it ought to be well-rehearsed, accurate information.
But as I shared with Murray, I've come to see that information sharing isn't the main point of blogging - at least not information sharing in the technical, academic sense. Because ISTM that actually blogging is about relationship. The very 'incestuousness' which made my suspicious of blogging at first (most blogging is about other people's blogs) actually reveals the real purpose of the tool, which is not learning things, but growing relationships. And the information I learn from blogs isn't so much information about things as about people. I suppose this started to gel for me when I started regularly reading Mark's blog - not primarily to learn things, but to find out how a far distant mate was faring in life. I share myself in my blog - and of course that includes my thoughts, theories and wild ideas, but more potently it is a giving of myself. So to all three of my readers : Here you are! This is me! :-)