Talking to myself

Blogging is, I think, a bit like being blind and talking to a room full of people. Some may be listening, nodding along and agreeing with you - or otherwise - but unless they choose to directly interact with you by joining the conversation there's no real way of knowing whether everyone isn't just at the buffet tucking into pork pies and ignoring the blithering idiot talking to themselves in the corner.

So I think to write a blog you must be a bit full of your own self-importance - to think that people who you don't know would be interested in what you have to say. I obviously include myself in this but hey, I'm a journalist so nuff said about that one.

If I am completely honest, I started my blog for one key reason. I read that one of the senior editors at the Guardian newspaper would not even consider job applications from candidates who did not have their own blog. That coupled with the fact that my technophile mother started one so I figured it was time I entered the blogging world.

I really hate the term blogging. It's just an online diary innit.

Without sounding like an moaning old woman, I think there are a lot of these unnecessary shortenings in life these days. As soon as people start talking in acronyms I get puzzled, and while I abbreviate are you to ru in text messages and other such sensible things, why take it further? We want to preserve our thoughts and feelings for future posterity - so why not do it in a medium that everyone can understand? I hardly think people are going to be combing over the strange abrupt colloquialisms in the same way people examine the nuances of middle-english in the Canterbury Tales or the iambic pentameter in Shakespeare. I mean, they had rules that could be learnt and deciphered. Unless txt msgng bcms the apopted form of language, I just don't think it's going to happen.

So there I go, talking to the ambivalent room again. It does feel nice when a chance comment from a stranger reminds you people are listening. Even if they don't agree.