You learn something new everyday. Or well that’s my goal for this blog. I’m going to learn new things and talk about it on here.
I wanted to come up with some sort of philosophical explanation or reason d’etre behind this blog’s topic. Something like “Learning is the beacon of hope for our future,” but I keep hearing this little voice inside my head going “really, Michael?” I find it difficult to take myself too seriously.
Truth be told I just like to learn new things. I buy books all the time about topics I want to know more about, I can’t stop googling things and if I hear a word I don’t know I put it in my cellphone’s little notepad. I figure if I’m learning new stuff I might as well write about it, and it will, at the very least, help me remember better.
It’s important to learn, and I generally don’t understand people who feel that they’re done with their education. That being said, I’d rather drink bleach than go back to school. So I learn on my own. I find as a general rule I’m more engaged in whatever it is that I’m taking up, simply because it’s directly self motivated. Learning in a school environment, to do well in a class, to have a high GPA, to get a job and so on, can often be so far removed from an actual goal that for me, I can easily lose sight of the ultimate end, especially if I’m uninterested, or cannot see a purpose for what I’m told to learn.
Of course the upshot of doing something like this on my own: with no one standing over my shoulder I don’t necessarily have to keep up with it. So I suppose this blog is also an effort to keep track of myself and make sure I don’t get complacent.
Anyway, this post is about learning to blog so I’ll share with you some of the things I learned about blogging:
1. Pick a topic:
I wrote several blog entries prior to this piece but what happened is what always happened when I wrote a paper without a topic and an outline. I would start off with one idea, make a left onto a brilliant and beautifully worded tangent, and then have no idea how to get back to my point.
What was I saying? Oh right.
The other blog posts had an individual topic but were never really focused on it. They were my general musing of the afternoon, and while reflections on how lucrative graduation parties are were quite witty and amusing, they lacked substance. So I actually set down the idea of writing a blog until I could come up with an overarching theme for what I was writing.
I decided to use learning because I’m in the process of teaching myself JavaScript and am planning to learn PHP after that. I wanted an forum to organize my thoughts and notes on the subject, and also somewhere to post links to site I’ve found helpful. I first thought, “Oh my god! I’ll create a database of knowledge!,” but really who has the time for that? And also, hello Wikipedia? So I set my sights a little smaller and took up the idea of blogging again.
For me this really clicked in my head when I thought of it. I’m probably not in a position to be giving advice, this being my first and only post (thus far!), but that’s never stopped me before, so I would just have to say to pick something you want to write about. I’ve written enough papers to know that if you don’t like the subject you will put the sucker off forever. But blog posts have no deadline, no one is paying to hear your thoughts on xyz, so if you don’t want to write about it, you never will.
2. Find your voice:
This seems to be the most disseminated piece of advice and I imagine it’s the most difficult. I actually chewed on this for a while. Should I be very professional? This blog is going to be apart of my website after all. Or more tongue and cheek? I probably won’t be able to pull off a very serious blog for long before my sparkling personality shines through.
I’ve continually heard that blogs are a great professional tool. In my head that discounted sounding playful, but that’s not necessarily true. Having your work persona and your personal life be two separate things I think maybe worked before the internet. Now they seem to collide a lot more. I’m me inside an office or out of it, I figure I can have a personality and a job, so why bother with the Clark Kent gear.
Ultimately it’s easiest and more honest to just use your own voice. A personal blog is essentially about you, so why write one if you’re just going to try and continually present someone else. And really I was born with all this personality for a reason, no point in stifling it to sound like a better worker-monkey.
3. Use links
I googled blogging tips for this post, which is how I came up with this exhaustive list. Using research from the web helps to make you more credible, and give you a chance to share some of the things you found that you thought were interesting. Plus they’re colorful!
4. Keep it short
…Maybe next time.
Here are a few sites I found helpful:
Penelope’s Guide to Blogging
Blogsessive
Digging Deeper: Your Guide to Blogging