What to Write?

Every now and then I look at how irregularly we post to our blogs (or maybe, I should say the blogs to which I post: this news blog, A Learner Yogi and From Deb's Kitchen) and wonder how people can generate so much content for theirs. So, here I am, another new year, staring at a blank screen and wondering, “Do I have anything to write?”.

Have we really nothing to say? Are our lives so routine that nothing blog-able occurs? Or are we so busy, there is no time to sit and think and post? Surely something happened in the last 3-4 months that would've been newsworthy enough for this blog!

Perhaps it's about defining the type of content for this blog? A stats blog implies statistical content, a kitchen blog implies recipes. What is news?

In the Latest from our other sites section, we only show content from two sections of Tony's site, the latest news for his site and general statistics and probability, and these two sections don't get updated much. Yet each week during the season, Tony is posting about the predictions and results of his AFL statistical modelling. Over the last two years he has built up quite an online presence in the Sports Analytics community, and contributed to three articles in The Guardian and Adelaide Advertiser newspapers and the Inside Sport magazine. That certainly would have been fit content for our news blog.

Last year wasn't filled with holidays and weekends away, the standard fodder for this blog. There have been significant events over the last year—some we like to keep private, some we're not ready to share—which have impacted our lives. More and more though, we're finding the immediacy of social media—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—seem to make blogging redundant. It is quicker to tweet a quick comment, or post a captioned photo than it is to sit and write a blog post. (And that is why I added a Latest photos section to this site, which displays photos from our three Instagram accounts!).

Maybe, that's the future for our switched-on society. However, I feel blogging still provides a medium to tell a story, to record all the sensations and thoughts around an event, to ramble. It just might not occur as often as it once did.