To Blog or not to Blog

While I was away last week I didn't blog - and it was good!  Then I get back and find this from Clayboy.

I wrote quite a long time ago about blogging and many of the themes remain.  I still think that blogging is for me, and I still think that there is a stress to me in blogging.  The most obvious solution would be to blog less often.  However last week I was talking to a counsellor and they talked about the weekly relationship - and how if the time between meetings stretches out things get saved up to say, and are more thought through, whereas turning up weekly the unconscious has more opportunity to get out.  I think the same is true of blogging.  Posting daily means that some days there is nothing to say - and yet they are sometimes the days when I learn most as I write something down that I didn't know.

The thing that I didn't write about in the earlier post was the community of bloggers.  It feels antisocial to blog but not to read others blogs, to blog but not read and sometimes respond to comments - but both of these activities can be very time consuming.

What am I going to do?  Not sure!  Watch this space.

Working from Home and Social Media

Not my office - far too little paper around for that!

I was sparked into thinking about working from home by this blog post.  Although I work from home, and have the issue of not having colleagues working alongside me at least in this church we say morning prayer together every day and have the opportunity to chat afterwards.

However, I am not going to blog on work - I have done that a reasonable amount already, but on my observations on social media.  Perhaps unsurprisingly I know a lot of vicars!  A subset blog and Twitter and Facebook and one of the things that I have noticed is that particularly blogging and Twittering (no I don't tweet) build communities and provide a a virtual neighbour for that displacement activity which is essential when that sermon just has to be written (like now!).  This is far from a scientific observation, but I am starting to wonder whether the growth in these media is in part down to the reduction in community in the workplace, providing a virtual community which will still be there when the current job isn't.

However, it can also be very addictive and at present I don't have time to tweet and don't feel the lack of community - although either of these might change!

Sabbath

Sabbath is the day on which all your work is done - even if it isn't.  So said Rob Bell at Greenbelt last year (free download here - about 45 mins into the talk).

It is part of a question and answer session that I didn't hear at the time, but which having listened to it in the car has made a big impression on me.  He was asked what he did, but rather than answer the question he challenged us all to think what it was that we "had" to do - that was what we should stop doing on our Sabbath.  As an example he switches his mobile off and doesn't answer email on his Sabbath - now there's a thought!  He said that his wife has her life run by lists - so for her the Sabbath includes no lists.

So what is it for me?  I think the computer definitely stays switched off, and the mobile would if it were an issue, but it is so often a blessing for meeting up with people.  One of the implications of this is that there will be a blogless day (Saturday), perhaps more as a symbol than anything else, but I believe a good one nonetheless.

Is this Fair?

Should employers Google you?  An article in The Guardian asks this question today.  If you are on Facebook, or blog then there is information on you out there that can be accessed readily.  If you are applying for a job (very relevant for me right now) is it fair for the interviewers to search for you on the web?

At the recent training I had from 3D Coaching this was discussed and we were told to think about the contents of our blogs.  We were also told that there is a priest out there who won't get a job because of his blog (and I noticed that one of the blogs I followed suddenly disappeared) - and one person then spent a free afternoon researching how to remove their Facebook entries entirely (they found a way that appeared to do it - I think they suspended it).

So is this fair?  The Guardian article suggests that there is no difference between this and saying things in the pub - except in the latter case there is no evidence!  Is this perhaps why some people blog pseudonymously?  Although I do wonder how possible it is to be anonymous.  In my case I think it is difficult to espouse openness if you are hiding.

During the training we were also told that we should be our real ourselves - if they see the real us and don't want that then that is a good thing to discover.  But if you are in desperate need of a job (luckily not my situation) then that ideal can perhaps be compromised.

Blogging and Personality

I have analysed my blog using Typealyser (h/t SueM) and it says that it is ISTP - the mechanic:

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment and are highly skilled at seeing and fixing what needs to be fixed. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Now that is all  very well, but in real life I am ENFJ and I hate risk (thoughts for a later blog come to mind!)  I have already written about how blogging perhaps brings out a different side and this provides further evidence.

When I first saw my result I was surprised at it and looked into the analysis and discovered that a good part of the text analysed came from my blogroll - so immediately thought that it was those "others" who were giving the rogue result - but I changed the source to exclude those and it still gave the same answer L

Am I becoming a Grumpy old man?

Or am I just using my blog to vent the inner grumpiness that has been there all along?

Recently I have noticed that some of my blogs have been a bit opinionated: complaining about journalists, people who comment without information and those who want to change the CofE.  What I am trying to figure out is whether this is a change in me, or a change in what I am prepared to express?

I saw a comment on a blog post which suggested that the author was a mild mannered Clark Kent in real life, but was a Superman complainer in the blogosphere.  That perhaps doesn't apply to me as I blog under my own name and, as a priest, am a sort of public figure locally (this post on blogging by another priest also discusses this).  So I am left with the question am I changing or is it an unleashing of something that has been suppressed?  And my answer is that it is probably a bit of both!  Certainly blogging is changing me, and stopping suppressing things is a change - though it wasn't what I meant.  In the blogosphere you are addressing everyone at once and cannot adjust your message to fit the circumstances - something that has tempted me in the past - so you are left with either being honestly yourself, or creating an alter ego - but that way lies madness.

No Christian Aid update today - there is only one for the weekend and that is on yesterdays.

Thoughts on Blogging

I blog for me, not for anyone else!  That is the main thing that I have learnt after blogging daily for a couple of months.

Plenty of other people have given their thoughts on blogging ( Lesley's Blog 1, Lesley's Blog 2, Naked Pastor), so I thought I would join the party.

1. Who is it for?  I go through a regular round of is it worth it - the time spent blogging - and yet when I dig really deep I find that it helps me.  There were a few posts (here and here) on working practices which changed the way that I see things - for the better, and that has not been a unique experience.
2. Frequency - I started the blog over a year ago posting about weekly, but life got busy and the frequency drifted and then almost dried up.  For the past two months I have been blogging daily and suspect that if I reduced the frequency I would find it drying up again (that is more a comment about me than necessarily about blogging!)
3. Stress - I don't like tight deadlines.  When I started blogging I was writing each post and posting it.  That put a big strain on me to find the time and the ideas each day.  I have now settled into a routine of preparing blogs ahead of time, and having some generic ones up my sleeve for emergencies.  If something topical crops up I can post there and then and use one of the others later.
4. Holidays - Or more correctly time away.  I have a residential coming up - should I write a load of blogs ahead of time and post them automatically each day, or should I shut up shop as my bishop does when he is away?  I have yet to work this one out, so any thoughts from those with more experience would be welcome.  Given points 1 and 3 I am leaning towards shutting up shop!
5. Statistics - Having said that I blog for me I do look at the statistics, although I am contemplating stopping that!  What is obvious is that if someone well read references or tweets me then I get more hits - but it doesn't seem to convert into more readers on a regular basis.  However, if I am writing for myself why do I care about the stats (anyone out there convinced? J).
6. Why do people always have 10 thoughts?  When I worked with Management Consultants they told me that they always started a presentation saying that there were three points - even if they didn't know what they were at the time.