Blogging about blogging isn’t all that bad, is it?

Caution: 525-word ramble ahead.

A reader who sometimes emails in his comments rather than place them in the appropriate box had this to say about my recent post on how if I were to quit blogging, I’d do it My Way.

Not being a blogger, I’m not really qualified to comment about the content.  However, I’ve noted in general that I’m not fond of songs about singing, movies about movie-making, and blog posts about blogging kinda fall into the mold.  To be good, a blog poster must have a unique experience to share with the world, and the greatest blogs are like that.  Your friend the psych nurse is about as unique as they get.  You, as an expat small-town Canuck are similarly imbued with a perspective that lends itself to insights no-one else will have.

Blogging about blogging seems somehow to be merely filling space.  On the other hand, one of your best efforts was the 20 commandments one.  Like I say, not being a blogger, I’m not really qualified to comment about the content.

I agree with him up to a point.  It’s true you will never turn on the TV News to hear the announcer say: Today at an editorial meeting this station’s editors decided to place the item you are about to see two items down from the item you just saw because… well actually we had to decide it by an arm-wrestle followed by rock-paper-scissors, and Susan won.

The media doesn’t like to talk about itself or other media because it’s generally seen as navel-gazing.  Still, most every newspaper and newsmagazine has a media page where the trivialities of news personalities and media trends are written up and discussed.  The media also makes the news when it’s a big business story, and editorial content there is often brought up.

Unless of course you’re talking Richard Quest at CNN, where getting caught with in the park with your pants down and your wing-wang out and tied to a rope while snorting illegal pharma products won’t generate so much as a burp’s worth of mention down in Atlanta. 

So when a blogger blogs about blogging when his blog isn’t mainly about blogging but about getting down what’s going on in his head while living this Canadian-expat-in-Germany life so that one day when they drag what’s left of him out from under the wheels of a bus his wife, daughter and people closest to him will be able to say, “yeah, I really knew him…”  is that such a bad thing?

I don’t think so. 

If you’re talking about the process of doing this very public and at times very thought-provoking hobby – and a hobby is all it will ever be to me – you can’t help but want to discuss the things you go through.  So many issues come up, be they about relationships, online etiquette, joy, frustrations, fatigue, the learning process and so forth.

I realise it could get a bit repetitious, so I try to pace myself, but there’s simply so much going on while doing this, it can’t be just ignored. 

So forgive me if sometime over the next couple of days I post the third one in a row about blogging.  It’s just kind of built up to it.