We do what we must, and call it by the best names

Well yesterday’s post certainly made me think! Mainly because M disagreed with my interpretation of how he views blogs. He does think blogs are self-indulgent, but his view of self-indulgence and mine are quite different, it seems.

The whole idea of self-indulgence to me is somewhat negative, and is linked with time wasting, i.e. you could be doing something far more constructive with your time instead of indulging in whatever it is you are indulging in. And there is a value judgement implied in my view of self-indulgence, too, along the lines of who on earth would care what you have to say, you worm? This could be partly to do with why I haven’t told everyone I know about this blog, because I still consider that I am being self-indulgent.

M sees self-indulgence far more positively and considers that having self-indulgences is a useful and healthy thing and part of life. See his comment (the anonymous one) in response to yesterday’s post. I do agree that some self-indulgence is good and helps us enjoy life. I suppose I believe that I need to achieve things (although my goals are always a bit vague and always changing). I definitely have a hierarchy in my head about which things are good to do and which things are bad. Something along the lines of cleaning the bathroom: good; playing SimCity for 8 hours straight: bad. How did this happen?? You may be wondering why I am persisting with this blog? Well, because I am enjoying the process (it’s fun! yay!) and because I am learning lots (mmm…. achievement….).

I suppose it’s all about balance, isn’t it. Some things in life ain’t fun or enjoyable but you have to do what you have to do. On the other hand there are lots of great things in life, things that make you happy or that you like or enjoy. If I flagellate myself all the time (cleaning the bathroom with a toothbrush) I will turn into a joyless shrivelled-up old prune!

I was going to write a thoughtful post on this whole issue, considering the meaning of life and M’s philosophical approach and how it differs from mine, but it’s all a bit too garbled in my head and I can’t express it clearly. Besides I don’t think I should try and explain what M thinks – I am sure to misinterpret or misrepresent him. Also it would take too long. And in any case I don’t think it my writings on this would necessarily be worth reading! [Edit: this is a good reminder for me that this blog is a means of practising my writing skills. Poor expression = misunderstanding. Bleh.]

Aaanyway. Back to blogs. I thought I would see what other librarians were saying about blogs outside the blogosphere. I did a bit of a search on the LISA (Library and Information Science Abstracts) database and found 94 articles with the word blog* (blog, blogger, bloggers, blogging, blogged..) in them. Bill Spence says:

RSS (meaning either Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is one of the good things to have emerged from the blog phenomenon of the last couple years. However, I’m still not convinced that blogs, on the whole, are the sliced bread of the new millennium. Frankly, I find most of them self-indulgent, unnecessary, and reminiscent of the Web circa 1996, when whole hoards of people discovered they could have a presence on this newfangled World Wide Web thing. (see http://www.webpagesthat suck.com for some examples of those early adopters.)

Blogs don’t really do anything that anyone with a little Web site authoring experience (and perhaps a little programming help) couldn’t already do; they just make it easier for more of the hoard to join the game. As someone who has spent years learning how to develop and maintain quality Web sites, it just peeves me a little bit that this new blogging thing is allowing more and more people into the “club,” regardless of the value of what they have to say!

Now don’t get me wrong. Not all blogs are as superfluous as that first wave of Web sites that foreshadowed them. Blogs like Gary Price’s ResourceShelf, Jenny Levine’s TheShiftedLibrarian, and Steven Cohen’s Library Stuff provide valuable and timely information on developments in the library and information fields that readers of Information Today and other ITI publications will (and do) certainly find worthwhile.
(from his article ‘Feed(ing) frenzy’ in the September 2004 issue of the journal Information Today. I added the URLs).

(For Mr Spence, self indulgence would appear to be a less-than-positive thing, too…)

This sentence made me laugh: this new blogging thing is allowing more and more people into the “club”. I wasn’t aware that there is a web authoring club! Says it all really, blogging is so simple that anyone with Net access can try it. Potentially we can all have a voice. This is a good thing, I think. Sure, there’s a lot of incoherence and rubbish out there. But there’s so much interesting stuff too!

How else would we be able to read about so many different people’s lives? I love reading about Cherry’s adventures in the workplace! I am waiting for Jolene to send us her first letter from the Malaysian National Service. I am curious to see what happens for John and his girlfriend visiting Florida from China. Will Israd and his family enjoy life in the US? What will Andrew talk about next? Will Graham find anything to talk about next? When will Mooiness get a girlfriend? Why on earth would I need to watch Big Brother?

Categories: blogging, work-life-balance, Internet, navel-gazing