There’s an article over at guardian.co.uk about weblogs this morning. Which means, of course, that it’s also in the Online supplement of the magazine. As usual the article is prescriptive – it informs the world what makes a good weblog, intentionally or not. This time, the byword of a quality weblog is personal content.
“The basic premise, however, has remained unchanged. Imagine your own precious little black book (probably a distant teenage memory now) spread open for the world to see. All your hopes, mistakes, peeves and secrets made public but lurking anonymously in the depths of a search engine, daring to be discovered. “
Now, regular long-standing readers and writers of weblogs know that they are a fickle beast and that they change and shift in response to pressures in your life. For example, for the last few weeks I have been short of money, working from home and having remarkably little contact with the outside world. So where does my content come from? The things that I stumble upon from around the web. Links. But that’s not all. Long-standing webloggers are also generally aware that people they know read their writing – even if only very occasionally. Some may even have friends who read and write sites of their own. Bits of your life become circumscribed – ‘no write’ zones. You’re not being dishonest, but you have to limit your subject matter. Personal content is the first to go – and over time it becomes harder to find, produce and put online.
Needless to say, I read this article and felt that (while I think that it is missing the variety of weblog content) I had forgotten to write about my life for several months now. I’m going to think about how I might reintroduce it.