As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time surfing the web, both for business and pleasure, I come across a fair number of blogs. I have a folder on my bookmarks bar for blogs in general, a sub-folder for local blogs, another for photoblogs, a couple of others for MP3 blogs. But I have never been a blogger -- until now.
I don't count the Myspace page I set up ages ago when I was invited to be a Myspace friend of DMBQ. Who could turn down an offer to be friends with an amazing (and friendly) Japanese band? I found that cruising the world of Myspace is much easier as a registered user -- it's pretty much mandatory -- but all I ever did on space was create a half-assed profile and post a photo of Bob the Subgenius in place of a self-portrait. I never even figured out the art of inviting Myspace friends and maintaining friendships, which I'm sure is pretty easy.
I was talking with Carroll the other night at a show; he's a mostly online friend who maintains www.humcity.com, a bloggish webpage that used to serve as an omnibus of links to upcoming local music events. More recently he has begun exploring the art of podcasting, and his shows links have become less comprehensive since he began using the page more as a place to post his semi-weekly pod-projects. "Why don't you, of all people, have a blog?" he asked me. I told him I've thought about it, but hadn't yet found the time to get into it. In retrospect, that's not entirely true -- I spend a fair amount of time surfing aimlessly, exploring other people's blogs -- sometimes I will use the "next blog" button built into the Blogger template to jump from one random blog to another, getting glimpses inside the lives of strangers around the world. I could probably expend a little of that idle lurking time posing my thoughts on this or that. But, as I told Carroll, I already have an avenue for my writing via my weekly music column and now a food column -- and I don't know that I need another self-imposed deadline.
So what am I doing here? I'm working on a story about local bloggers, so I figured I'd go through the motions and set one up. It may lay idle like the vast majority of blogs, then again, maybe I will become part of the ever-expanding blogosphere. Who knows.
(A quick aside: When I ran the built-in Blogger.com spellcheck on what I've typed so far, the spellcheck dictionary, which apparently does not include any words associated with blogging, showed that "blog" was not a word and offered a suggestion to replace it with "bloc.")