jtmitchum.com

Blogging was only a beginning trend the first go around I had. Much like any new toy, I didn’t want to read the instructions, understand how the thing worked, or pay attention to the rules of safety before beginning. I just wanted to play with a new toy and publish any squirt of a thought that came to mind.

I furthered this obsession by attempting to co-opt my entire family into the act, which met with mixed responses. Dad continually sent me e-mails wondering how to secure his site so only the people of his choosing could read his thoughts and I tried, in vain, to explain over and over again that what he wanted was e-mail, the whole point of a blog was public publishing.

This is only one example of several where I quickly realized the goal of a family portal was weakly imagined and poorly framed in my own presentation. After-all, I like writing and sharing, but did I ever consider if that activity was of any interest to my poor family members?

Selfishness aside, I’ve developed a few new reasons to bring back a blog from the dead – things have changed and I have learned.

What I’ve learned is that of simple journalism principles – know your purpose, audience and medium.
Friends and family are the audience and my purpose is to keep them up-to-date, perhaps with entertainment value, of my goings ons. (medium = blog)

What has changed is also considerable and by orders of magnitude ( a lot of things have changed and they are pretty big things). My desire to use a didactic vocabulary – unchanged.

I know who I’m talking to this go around. I’m writing to the people I care about, miss and think of often. You see, in my current set of adventures, I’m distanced even more from the people I love and care about. I thoughtfully assume that my experience is not mine alone – that you feel distanced from me as well.

Also – this isn’t meant to replace conversation and getting together – it isn’t instead of anything. More selfishly, it is to help me feel a little less alone.

In general, I will attempt a politeness in the length of a post and I will divide the posts into topics of school, family and friends to reflect either what the post is related to, or whom I think I’m writing to more directly.

So – I will, occasionally, email you a link to a blog post, but in daily conversation I won’t interrogate you for information only found on a ‘blog’. There will be no guilt for not stopping by regularly, but if I think I’ve carefully crafted something worth your time – I will let you know.