Введение этой должности

Mon espoir pour 12-Nov-09 is to write keyboard sculpt the most perfect blog post to celebrate a calendar year of blogging, eschewing the usual mind-numbing propensity for perfectionism and simply allowing the words to tumble like a fresh pack bunch of pick-up-sticks on a surface which does not resemble a viscousy quagmire of quicksand, a hydrocolloid gel useful as geohazards for skunks.

 

Thus, I might remark that the future reads the past with more dispassion and accuracy. Perhaps, one day, blogging will be passé. Somewhere in time will exist bits and bytes of text, providing research archive for those who  attempt to understand the phenomena of the habits of online bloggers, blogging and blogs. When one is immersed in a contemporary phenomenon, it is difficult to identify what is the phenomenon. Thus, I reminisce wearing huge blinders which, er, blind. Thus, these brief paragraphs ― with a mea culpa modicum of endnotes ― provide archaeological meat to flesh out this phenomena of web logging.

BLOGGING: A DEFINITION

12 November 2008 was one entry  into blogging, descriptively defined by Ms. D. Weil in 20 statements. [1] When her words are smooshed together a blog can be defined as authentic, personal, unedited journal-like entries ― infused with one’s distinctly unique voice ― posted online in a kind of alternative media forum, which posts provide something to talk about at cocktail parties as a form of knowledge management for big corporations, the unemployed and navel gazers who may (or may not) wish to add a URL to the résumé, with hope one’s parent does not access entries. [2]

BLOGGING AND COCKTAIL PARTIES

I respect authority of experts. I state, for researchologists, that I have never attended a cocktail party. I always wanted to own the little black dress. Perhaps, I did? I think I drank uno martini in my life. I was intrigued. Ordered. Then spit most of it out and. I am not a colossal fan of tossing eyeball-like vegetables into a drink although will eat on pizzas. [3] Rather than disrupt, I shall not exit to rummage through trunks, which reminds Christmas lights?

 

O.K. I did.  What reason to keep snowshoes when semi-retired in YVR? Plaid shirt? A hair-lined shift? Lenten accessory? Why purchase of polka-dot Capri pantaloons? 

BLOGGING: DEFINITION(S)

Er, yes, blogging. Before review of this most splendidly wondrous year a definition can, perhaps, be expected. This provides readers with a morsel of topic under scrutiny.

Blogging is an activity, which starts out casually enough with posting of a poem for *niece* to read and then progresses through stages of crazed depraved obligation martyrdom compulsion hysteria maturation of composition where one discovers the efficiency of the strike through key. O.K., a tadlet overstated without the scope of Ms. Weil’s classic 20-point synopsis.

 

Blogging? En une autre lingue du bouche, les mots prennent une trajectoire clairementshun mais lentement. Blogging is an online activity which starts innocently enough with, perhaps, a post about the indignities suffered upon the planet with plasticization of Mother Earth but becomes a boggling hobby obsession which removes one from the reality of television until family and friends begin to show up at studio doorstep in person asking all manner of highly personal questions to which you retort: Didn’t you read about it at my blog? Why are you here? Is the service provider out? Do you know what is wrong with this keyboard? If we are related, then I do not think my request for Photo ID is unreasonable?

 

Blogging is an activity which first chews and then consumes, one’s inner mantra anticipating the end of a blog, knowing ‘there will be peace when you are done’ when the blogger might lay a weary head to rest upon  keyboard. Blogging is knowing there is a time to cry ― if not weep― and a time when one’s inner voice crys out, ‘Don’t you cry no more.’

BLOGGING: MY JOURNEY, PART ONE OF MUCHO

Definitions are so critical to commencement of any item of composition. Definitions (stipulated, imagined or fabricated) assist all parties concerned to grasp the core essence (or, core kjarninn, if one will) of topic on tap. [4]

 

My journey as a blogger has been frothed fraught with perils not unlike those of deep sea divers caught in a blizzard a really big underwater storm. I started without any common sense of what I thought I might be doing because I possessed no a priori knowledge of what was entailed. Thus, I commenced to blog tossed about on a turbulent tempest of emotion. At first, I blogged trepidaciously and then fulsomely and finally cheaply, adjusting to the scarcity of words needed to make a point (or twenty-two) in a confined space.

 

That being said, this 365 journey of diurnal and nocturnal cycling has more than exceeded any expectations I might have thought I had. In The Beginning, I thought of blogging more as noun than a verb. I did not realize that action verbs (spell checking, head banging, keyboard slinging, cutting&pasting, coffee IV-ing, pie baking, sleep deprivationing, commenting) would be necessary. In The genesis of wordzoo, once known as Samson’s Space, I thought of blogging as modest post of a few but visible number of  words from time-to-time, which might (or not) collide with the eyes of rapaciously random readers.

 

Thus, I wrote unselfconsciously, without thought of who was out there. And, to any I offended as newbie blogger I do apologize. Hard to know how an audience might read/interpret the written word.

SOMEONE IS OUT THERE

Then it became obvious others were out there. An early comment, from T-, stated: I’m glad you were able to make funny with your stall and your Susannah :) She sounds obstinate. lol. It was not until 24 December 2008 I received a second comment from Matt M- who wrote ‘good! Merry Christmas’. These 2 comments of 2008 were adequate to bolster impetus to write to this day and this very hour. What little encouragement some require to carry on keyboarding. It was not until February 2009 that I understood what 'LOL' meant. LOL.

HOURS BECAME 365 DAYS

Almost unbeknownst to me a year of my life has passed like, er, well things that pass each other. Has it been an enjoyable year? Why, yes, yes it has. The risk of writing and maintaining a love of word making has been one reward. A second reward is that of connexion with persons I would not meet under normal circumstances at the local deli where home made sausages and  pastas of various shapes and sizes abound. The two best things, of many, about blogging and bloggers are kindness and wit.

 

A third reward is finding that a blog is not a platform nor a performance but reciprocity of persons inhabiting cyberspace and visiting like backyard neighbours. There are many to thank for this reciprocity and I worry to name in case I omit anyone.

 

What next? When I think of blogging I do think of a gerund, a form regularly derived from a verb to function as a noun.  The amazing origin, circa 1505-1515 of gerund is the Late(r)(est?) Latin is ‘gerundium’ or the true Latin ‘gerundum’ which means ‘to carry on’ which might inspire to rise ‘above the noise and confusion’ and see how lovely and simple to build a shared humanity with a few words sprinkled on a page. [5] [6]

les endnotes

[1] Weil, D. (9-DEC-2003). Top 20 Definitions of Blogging. Posted at Marketing Profs. http://www.marketingprofs.com/3/weil9.asp Accessed 11-Nov-2009.

[1.a.]There are a few entry dates for blogging start-up. Historians may tête à tête (or elbow-a-elbow for hockey fans). This mishap may be revisited at the post titled: Courage of the Wannabe Blogger: A 90-Day Debrief.

[2] How many would like their mom to read their blogs aloud to one’s Aunties?

[3] Are olives a fruit or a vegetable? Well, gee, I dunno. Another post, perhaps?

[3.a.] Obviously have not lived a ‘Mad Men’ kinda life when one could openly smoke unfiltered cigarettes and drink apertivos, highballs and beer chasers in the office après midi rather than shade-grown, organic, farmer cooperative coffee at fair trade trans-global pricing in entirely recyclable packaging. Mad Men (& Slightly Irked Pre-Overt, Pre-Feminist Women) is a T-riffic period piece which has ability to force one to keep watching as one might observe a gang of spiders digesting an elk haunch dragged into a cocktail party. I mean there’s Francine blatantly puffing on a cigarette at 72 days pregnant in Episode 2 of Season 1 & it’s blog-worthy remarkable to remark that the anti-smoking lobby hasn’t had this television melodramaoperata shut down more quickly than a New York minute. Anyhoo . . . have not, to my knowledge, attended a cocktail party, balancing a martini glass in one hand and a platter of Hors D'oeuvres in another hand, fingers dripping jewel encrusted rings, bracelets and necklaces, which accent the sleek form of a dress of black. However, I did view the 1988 movie Cocktail but fell asleep before I wrote down the first recipe.  In retrospect, the life of a school marm is sedate(d). 

[4] O.K. ‘on tap’ makes me realize I have never been to a kegger. Have I never not not lived? Of course, this is understandable. One hardly expects a coven of teachers might imbibe a keg at end of parent-teachers’ nite. No one might not.

[5] In other etymological texts, gerundum is interpreted as ‘to bear’ but I live in an intensely urban environment and there is paucity of ursus in YVR proper so this does not fit. ‘Bear’ can mean forbearance and to all guests to wordzoo live, I am most grateful for thine forbearance. To those who have ‘carried on’ for lengths of cybertime longer than wordzoo, I salute you with pies for wordzoo is one and just begun.

[6] This is a live "Carry On Wayward Son" by the band Kansas, from the Leftoverture album. It was recorded at the Canada Jam concert on August 26th, 1978 at Mosport Park. Posted by winbetaxp6267, 24 April 2009

© Sharilyn Calliou. 10-11-12 November 2009. All Rights Reserved.

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