I was asked again recently, why I bothered with a blog. I was told blogs are for techies or uni students having issues with focussing or social interaction, journalists or even politicians. Normal 42 year old working class man and father like me don’t keep blogs.
I don’t know about the profile of keeping blogs, but as far as I’m concerned, this isn’t a blog. It’s a journal. It’s my personal journal. I have been keeping personal journals for yonks.
As a school boy, I started an exercise book version and recorded my views and understanding of stuff I read, especially the Bible. This went on for a few years.
Just before I got into uni, there was a television program called “Doogie Howser MD”. It was a series about a boy genius who got into medical school in his early teens. The show always ended with him making an entry in his journal, except he did it on his PC.
I took cue and while in uni, I got my first IBM compatible PC and started keeping my journal in a 5.25 inch floppy disk. It then became a 2.5 inch version. You know – miniaturisation. I first saw the USB thumb drive in 2001– the whole 125mb of it and was so impressed I went out and got one (I still have it with me and kiddo now uses it for school work). I was going to resume my journal-keeping on it, till the World Trade Centre in NY got bombed and Bush flew into a rage which propelled him first to Afghanistan and then mysteriously, to Iraq.
In Iraq, the Baghdad Blogger was born and well, the rest was history. I started thinking about resuming my journal using that medium and I think in 2003, I took my first wobbly steps.
So you see my blog is simply a continuation of my journal. In fact, there were a few entries I found in one of my older floppies (disk, you twisted reader). To my amazement the contents (a couple of pieces about my workdays in uni in Sydney) were fully usable so they have found their way into this blog. It has always been about content, so they said. The media is only secondary, except as a high turnover commodity.
There you have it. This is a personal journal. It does not therefore, have an agenda. When I make an entry about Malaysia for example, it isn’t to preach migration or create displeasure with the government. While I often have a very real sense of self grandeur and importance, I seldom thought I could influence anything or anyone through my journal. This journal is a proverbial wank (pardon the crude reference – unfortunately it has become the most instantly recognisable word to convey my meaning). It isn’t to give voice to any cause. It is only my take on events, experiences and situations. It is no different from telling someone, over a cup of coffee, my opinion on something. I know I have a few people who read this every so often. I feel like I am telling these people how I feel.
Occasionally when the subject matter of my entry is a matter I think some other people would be interested to listen in on, I share it in the appropriate forum. Again, I don’t have an agenda.
These are just personal thoughts. When I make an entry, I find myself organising my thoughts on a particular topic. That has an amazingly calming effect on me. It “centres” me. It gives me a sense of proportion and bins any illusory thoughts and senses. It lulls me into a different world, one where I’m free to explore my own thoughts and feeling of anything and anyone.
More than anything else I guess, and this is especially true for the initial years of our still relatively new life here in Melbourne, it is a record of my experiences. I want to record events, incidents, feelings I had when undergoing certain phases or dealings I had with some people and generally put “pen to paper”, of how life is, down under. It has thus far been a beneficial exercise for me. Whenever I get a chance, I store in a corner of my puny mind, details of an incident worth “writing home about”. Actually that’s it. It’s like writing home. I feel like I’m on this journey and when there’s a sight which blew me away or caught me, I want to write home to tell people there, about it. Writing entries on this blog is a lot like that.