Oops I may have lost my voice…or maybe I haven’t found it yet.
I am not actually new to blogging. My first experience with a blog was of the family trip when the kids (now 17 and 19) were 10 and 12. We took them out of school for 6 months and went travelling. We started in Singapore for Christmas then flew to India and continued on to Thailand, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan. The purpose of this blog was twofold. The main purpose was to keep friends and family informed of our progress, so they wouldn’t worry about us. The second was so that anyone who cared to know about our trip could read about it as we went along and we didn’t have to explain endlessly about what we had done upon our return. Alan and I had gone on a year long cycling trip 15 years before the family trip and I was up to the back teeth with endless explanations when we got back. I don’t mind talking about travel in a blog while I am there, but if I am in Canada, travel is a long way away…both literally and figuratively.
My second blog was when I went travelling with my brother Charles. He is on a mission to visit pretty much every country on earth. I went on his Central America leg with him a couple of years ago. It had been a few years since the family trip and I was feeling the need to travel…and travel I got… mostly by ancient school bus, which is the predominant local transportation throughout Central America. 8 countries in 30 days. For both of these trips, blogging fit in nicely with the desires of my fellow travelers. My then 12 year son Jacob needed his internet fix, as did my news and politics addicted brother on the respective trips so every day or two we found an internet cafe and I blogged then played freecell (an obsession of mine that shows no signs of abating after almost a decade) until it was time to leave.
These two blogs were each followed by about 10 people. My mother, a couple of sisters (not even all 6 of them) and a couple of people from work. No one I didn’t know ever found either blog, nor did i ever expect they might.
I am not sure what I expected when I started this blog. It was a way of getting people off my back about what I was going to do with the ever growing mountain of my hats/hat patterns. I would start a blog and show my hats there (here) until I had enough courage to write the book… or publish the patterns… or whatever. I knew how to blog…or I knew how to go to the internet every day or two and post something anyway. I had done that before and it was easy and familiar for me. And my public (i.e. my husband, my mum, my sister Phil and Barb from work) had all liked my blogging before.
This blog is slightly different in that I now have a handful of people I don’t even know who follow my blog. Also, I am not sure how one goes about liking a post on my blog, but people do that sometimes too. My husband and I “visited” my blog and didn’t find anywhere to do that, but every so often, I get an email telling me so and so liked a post of mine. When this happens, I go and see who they are and try to figure out what they might possibly see in my postings. One thing that keeps coming into my consciousness as I visit these blogs is there is a lot of talk about voice…hence the post name, laryngitis.
This talk of voice reminds me of things I have dreaded and avoided in the past, like artists statements. I have looked back over the last while and realized that I seem to have lost any voice I may have had. Lately I have resorted to posting pictures with one or two lines of text. It may be that it is Oscar season and I have spent so much time in movie theaters that I just haven’t had time to think about thinking about my process. I have just been trying to either finish stuff or grab old photos and post stuff with little or no context. Because I was told it is important to keep posting regularly. I am not entirely sure why. Note to self: Find your voice
gillianknits 