Remember Horton Hears a Who? All this blogging going on around the world brings to my mind that little guy in the dust mote shouting for his life. He was a “very small, very small shirker” named Jo-Jo.
That’s how I feel sometimes, doing this. It does occur to me from time to time that I could be doing something “more productive.” And when you’re blogging, knowing that there are tens, if not hundreds of millions of blogs out there, you can feel even more like a Who in a dust speck than you already do.
“We are here!”
On the other hand, through blogs, you can peek into the minds of others in a way you never could before. I came across this woman’s blog by accident during a keyword search for something one day (I forget what). I love to read her blog; she’s a brilliant young anthropology/sociology PhD candidate at some university in Canada. So, while blogging can make you feel more like a Who in a dust speck, when you read blogs, you also get a sense of who the other Whos are, which makes you feel more connected to the rest of the world. It’s a remedy for alienation. There’s nothing like it. I also like to read this woman’s blog; she’s an expat living here and obviously a great cook (which reminds me, I should ask her if it was the French brown sugar that screwed up the American chocolate chip cookie recipe I made yesterday and what I should do about it. She could surely tell me…).
You should really give blogging a try. It’s an escape. It’s a creative outlet. It’s therapeutic. It’s intellectually stimulating. It’s a way to stay connected with friends and loved ones. It’s liberating. It’s a blast, pure and simple.
Unless you’ve really been walking around for years with your fingers in your ears humming Pop Goes the Weasel (which is entirely possible if you’re American), you’ve heard about MySpace, which I consider to be the trailer park of the blogosphere. Your kids are probably begging you to let them create MySpace accounts. My advice to you is to compromise, or even be proactive and help them set up a real blog early, before they get sucked into that universe, which usually looks more like sorority girls gone wild at Mardi Gras than a blog. Trust me, I look at my 21-year-old son’s MySpace page (with his permission!). I know whereof I speak. It’ll take you ten minutes. It’ll be quality time. It’s free.
This week I helped my 10- and 13-year-old stepkids create blogs on Blogger, which has a user interface that’s so simple even kids can work with it. It started because the older one was expressing curiosity about our blogs. We told him what kinds of things we blog about. He looked at them and got a big kick out of leaving us each a comment! He clearly liked the idea of having a blog, but didn’t really seem to know where to go from there. So I told him he could say anything he wanted to (even that his stepmother was a bitch); talk about soccer, video games, the environment (all things he’s passionate about), school, girls, his trip to Germany (he’s going to be an exchange student later this year). Then I helped him figure out how to name his blog, created it with him, showed him how to post entries and pictures and he was off. The younger one didn’t really need any direction; she’s very verbal and also the most opinionated and self-possessed 10-year-old I’ve ever met! She’d been wanting a blog for a while so she could scan and upload her drawings, which are exceptional!
Their first entries were adorable. The little one said that, in addition to posting her drawings, she planned to “talk about hamsters and pandas, which I know a lot about.” She told her friends not to put any last names or contact information on her blog or their own or they’d “end up in the arms of an old pedophile” (we were very frank about the risks and the rules). The older one warned his readers not to walk up stairs looking at the screens of their laptops because they’d fall on their faces. He also discussed (with a lot of humor!) what he perceived to be the hazards of overindulgence in the rich foods that the French traditionally eat at New Year’s. We were surprised at how comfortable the kids were expressing themselves through this medium and how eager they were. They were giggling, reading each other’s posts and, best of all, writing.
Another bonus: they’re at that age where real communication with parents is decreasing, which always happens just when we really wish we knew what was in their confused, secretive little heads. How better to get an idea of the mental state of your kids than to read between the lines of their blogs? When I was five, I’d write “I hate Mom” on the chalkboard in my room when I was mad and I’d make sure she saw it. Protoblogging. See what I mean? I made sure my son had a chalkboard in his room at that age too…
If you don’t do it for yourself, at least consider doing it for your kids. Their world will be more wired than you can ever imagine. If, however, you are intrigued by the idea of blogging, take a look at The Paris Blog. Scroll down to “Other Paris Blogs” in the sidebar on the right and see the wide variety of things people blog about. For a list of the top 100 most popular blogs on the planet, go here.
Still can’t imagine what you’d blog about? Doesn’t matter. It’s an organic process; once you start, your blogging takes on a personality of its own. I started this one when I moved to France, thinking I’d write about my experiences and news for my far-away friends and family so that they could easily find out what I was up to and experience life in France vicariously. Before I knew it, I was blogging about whatever was on my mind. And frequently! Cut loose. Be crazy. Start a secret erotica blog… If it’s entered the mind of a human being, there’s somebody blogging about it. Sky’s the limit, folks.
You know how I am. Any time I get excited about something, I want to share it. That’s why I like to teach French. By the way, there are more bloggers in France than in any other country! The French prize ideas above pretty much anything and like to share and discuss them. They enjoy heated debate and they do seem to like to hear themselves talk, so I’m not surprised. Now I’m one of them.