Walkin’ the tightrope stretched around the world
Walkin’ the tightrope save the boys and girls
Walkin’ the tightrope let’s make it right
Walkin’ the tightrope do it do it tonight
- stevie ray vaughn

Yesterday  in my post “Slipped in the Cosmos” I talked a bit about what happens to your blog once you hit that “Publish” button.  It’s all pretty interesting if you are sort of geeky.  Hopefully it gives paddle bloggers out there a few little tidbits to think about.  On the other hand, you don’t want to get wrapped up in it either.  So why blog?

As a web developer, I have clients come to my door all the time knowing only one thing, they want a website.  Amazingly they still often want one for no other reason than they feel it’s just something they need to have.  It’s just what you do these days.  Ok.  But why?  My first questions to them are always about goals.  “Why do you want a website?”,  “Who’s your audience?”, “ Are you selling your company or selling your product?”, “How do you plan to use the website?”, “What are your expectations?” and so forth .  9 times out of 10, the poor person is just looking at me sort of stunned.  They hadn’t really thought  about it.  Sure, they want to talk about the company and the products. They want some pictures and maybe some fancy animation.  They basically want what their competitor has.  Still, the true reason for the website is quite vague.  Even companies that incorporate blogs into their website are unsure why they are doing it. They know it’s sort of “hip” and feel like it will reach a new audience.  Thing is, they often don’t realize until much later that someone has to keep writing the darn thing. Blogs come and go like the wind.  

Blogging is unique in a way. It’s a writer’s forum. Bloggers love to write and share stories.  It’s not business.  (Well, for most of us anyway) Blogs are more or less self-serving.  They are nothing more than open conversations with friends and family or sometimes just ourselves.  We blog to share and we blog just to put all that stuff rattling round in our heads somewhere. Blogs are fun, they are healing, they are conversational, they are many things depending on the writer.  But the bottom line of course is that blogging is simply a place for your stuff.

Over time many of us have become categorized. We are sailing bloggers or paddle bloggers, or cooking bloggers or whatever subject happens to dominate our lives.   Some of us categorized ourselves, others just fell into a category over time.  But none of us are just one thing.  We don’t just paddle for instance.  In the past this has come up many times throughout our paddle blogging world.  I remember my friend from New York taking heat for political statements,  or another getting ribbed for occasional nudity. . . I usually take hits for my self-examinations.  Some readers feel we should just “stick to the subject”.  Maybe.  But if this is true I fear our blogs become nothing but products and we find ourselves losing control of our own journals.  We also lose our own uniqueness.  I don’t know about you, but I tend to read blogs by people who happen to share a love of paddling. I don’t spend too much time reading paddling blogs. 

Lastly though, we can’t deny how the growth of blogging has changed what we do.  As I talked about yesterday, blogs have taken on a new voice.  What we say travels.  I can tell you from my own experiences, that what I say here will usually come back to me at a symposium or in a class or whatever.  We do have to be mindful of that.  However, the bottom line is that your blog should be yours. Write about paddling, sure.  But don’t limit yourself, don’t seek numbers, target audiences or kudos.  If you are a good writer, if you keep it real and interesting, people will find you.   Don’t try to be something, just be.  If you do that, you’ll enjoy blogging no matter if you have 5 readers of 5,000.

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