Blogs, Weblogs, Diaries and Journals

Susie over at Underpaid Kept Woman beat me to the punch with her post about blogs yesterday but I am going to go ahead and post my thoughts today. I have been thinking lately how much I dislike the word blog. When I see the word blog my mind reads weblog and breaks it into the syllables web - log. This is a word I dislike even more. It makes my skin crawl how everyone is bundled into a group and labled a blogger. Even my own URL contains the word blog. I carefully mulled over if I should use that term and gave in to it because it is short and easy to remember. If I were not so lazy I might even take a stand and change the folder name to journal. In the event I did so and lost everything, I would be angry with myself, might even cry, so for now the word stays. Without much thought I automatically catagorize as I read things online. It is multitasking. I read and subconsciously my mind begins filing like a roladex. I lable them blogs, weblogs, diaries and journals. Those who write them are bloggers, webloggers, diarists and journalists. How easy is that? The print media has been known to feature an article or two on our little pasttime, highlighting the most popular of our sect, using the word 'blogger' to define and put us in our place. Their tone is one that seems to always leave me feeling like they have reached out and wiped a huge nasty booger across the internet. I know I am not the only person who has felt the snobbery in those pieces from those getting paid to write. I find that most of those reporters/columnists have no real ideas of their own and when they write they can only write by following the methodology of "who, what, when, where, why and sometimes how." Monkeys can be trained to plug words into spaces, too. Ya know? When the term blog is used by the broadcast media it brings to mind all those sites that seem to have a theme along the lines of politics. Political bloggers seem to be a big thing on MSNBC and CNN. The media has given these folks a voice. They have become a noted political pundant with their opinions being read live on the air and discussed by others who deem themselves experts in some area or another. I do not read these online havens of satire and critisism. Actually I despise them. I steer clear of them as if they are some huge turd floating in the pool of the internet. The term "web-log" conjures the image of one of those reports a security guard fills out when making rounds. Clipboard and flashlight in hand logging entries at a set time noting anything that maybe out of the ordinary, suspicious, or indicating that things are just fine and dandy as the perimeter is walked hourly. Many of those Linker-Not-Thinker places exist on the internet posting links to this site or that site and nothing else with much thought behind the entry of the day. I do not visit these places much. When I do I may click a link or two while shielding my eyes at the same time because you never know for sure what might pop up and make you want to take your eyes out and wash them with bleach. Then there are those who post entries that literally log their day: where they went, who they saw, what they did and what they ate. I feel they are better suited to use the word diary though. Reading those entries I silently begin "Dear Diary, Today I ... " even if it is not actually there. These are not the places on the net that I visit very often either. I might check in once a month to see if there is something of interest and move on quickly. Finally there are journals. Ahhh the journals. This is where my weakness lies. I am addicted to internet journals. Much the same as Just Ask Judy posted yesterday, beating me to the draw with her post on her addiction. I love reading internet journals. I spend a couple hours each day clicking my favorite links. Some of the journals I love because I like the way the writer can turn a phrase, lead off with some insane thought and come full circle with a life changing revelation. Some journals I read because the humor gives me much laughs and I see myself or my kids in their entries. Some I have read for so long that I have an interest in their lives. I want to know what is going on in each life each and every day. I want to look into the window and see all the people who live real lives and think similar thoughts. This might lend some to place us readers into the catagory of voyuers but that is OK! I like reading that a mom on the other side of the world has the same kind of life as I do (and I hate the term "Mommy Blog" with a passion!). In reading events and thoughts of other people I find validation and justification of my own life and thoughts and quirks and out bursts of emotion. I laugh out loud and read snippets of posts to my husband in the evening. It opens avenues of conversation and we use our brains and think. We use our brains and mouths and communicate. Now I don't want to sound like my husband and I have nothing to talk about (because we do!) or that all we talk about is something I read in a post online (it is not!) What I am saying is it brings to light topics we may or may not have talked about before. It opens a door into a subject we not have walked through and is stimulus for deeper thoughts we have never shared before. We readers of internet journals are thinking and reading and writing because we ARE thinkers and readers and writers. We have beliefs and opinions that we express. We can step back and make a bad situation funny or view it from a different angle. We can get all the junk up and out and breath deeply with a sigh of relief that somewhere our thoughts have been heard and are felt by others. We know we are not alone in the journey called life. So with this entry I stand up in front of the crowd to say: My name is Angie. I am an internet journal addict and this is my journal. jour·ney n. A process or course likened to traveling; a passage: the journey of life. Etymology: journey c.1225, "a defined course of traveling," from O.Fr. journée "day's work or travel," from V.L. diurnum "day," noun use of neut. of L. diurnus "of one day" (see diurnal). As recently as Johnson (1755) the primary sense was still "the travel of a day." The verb is from c.1330. Journeyman (1424), "one who works by day," preserves the etymological sense. Its Amer.Eng. colloquial shortening jour (adj.) is attested from 1835. jour·nal n. A personal record of occurrences, experiences, and reflections kept on a regular basis. Etymology: jurnal "a day," from O.Fr. journal, originally "daily" (adj.), from L.L. diurnalis "daily" (see diurnal). Sense of "daily record of transactions" first recorded 1565; that of "personal diary" is 1610, from a sense found in French. Posted by Angie at 05:50 AM | Comments (4)