Has blogging changed me?

"opportunities don't happen, you create them." Chris Grosser

I have been doing this blog for almost three and a half years now I think. Today I see I have written 886 posts. That's a lot of words - most of them trivial. When I created the blog on my home page I said "I like food and I'm bored", as justification for being narcissistic enough to think that anyone would be interested in my meanderings through the world of food by way of a blog. Not that I was really doing it to interest others. It was really for me - to amuse myself - to stop myself being bored, although I'm not sure that I would go as far as to say that it was/is self-therapy as this quote suggests.

"I think blogging, by and large, is basically therapy. And I'm sure, and I know, that there are some terrific bloggers and some legitimate bloggers. But I think, by and large, a huge percentage of people who are blogging are doing it for self-therapy." Mike Barnicle

For me it's sort of a discipline. There is satisfaction in having completed a whole post - preferably every day, but actually as often as I can. It's like ticking off a task from a to do list. Which I also like to do. I'm a bit anal like that I guess. Indeed every week in my diary I write a list of to-dos, which, it has to be said, do not always get done. And my New Year's Resolutions certainly don't all get achieved.

“I think the pleasure of completed work is what makes blogging so popular. You have to believe most bloggers have few if any actual readers. The writers are in it for other reasons. Blogging is like work, but without coworkers thwarting you at every turn. All you get is the pleasure of a completed task.” Scott Adams

My audience is indeed small, and this does not bother me at all. I'm certainly not doing this to be a media sensation or to make money. I never expected to have many readers. although I really appreciate those who do take the time. But I do think that it has changed the way I view the world. Well not all the time, but for a bit every day.

Today as I rambled back from the shops, my brain rambled along too, observing this and that, and here's perhaps the main thing that has changed in me since I started blogging. Almost always as I look at something these days I start to wonder how it could be used in a blog post. How could it be connected to food? Or - today's thought - to blogging itself. I never used to think like this, and I am not saying that I always think like this. My brain is not constantly thinking about food and this blog. I am not obsessed. There is room in my brain for a multitude of other things. But each day in relatively spacious moments such as walking back from Eltham, and until I have settled on the topic of the day, I am conscious of needing to find a new subject.

Needing - perhaps an over emphatic word. My aim at the start was to write a post every day - after all some people write in a diary/journal every day. Although I note that even then this was just an aim and I recognised that it might not always happen. Sometimes one is just too busy doing other things. Mind you I confess I am disappointed in myself if I don't manage to do a post more than half of the days in a week. Lately I have been somewhat remiss and I have worried that it was a sign I was giving up.

I chose to do a blog rather than keep a journal because I enjoy looking into things on the net, finding pictures, and using the software (Wix) that creates this blog. Scribbling in a notebook is not the same. It might be if I could draw, but I absolutely cannot do that. And the 'research' (rather too grandiose a word really) that I do can be done almost simultaneously. It's all a bit haphazard but the other main bonus of making this blog is that I find out things, I learn new stuff. Mind you, my brain being what it is these days, I forget some of it almost as soon as I have learnt it.

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” A.A. Milne

Going back to how blogging has changed me let me give you a few examples of the everyday things that I now do differently.

When I am out shopping - mostly for food, but also in places like big shopping centres or markets, not only am I just trying to find what is on my shopping list, and see what is on special that I might buy, or what is good in fresh food this week, I am also now much more aware of new products, of disappearing products, of how and why the shop itself has changed, what other people are buying, looking for weird and strange things, so that I can write about them. Looking for a blog topic in other words. And there are so many to choose from. I have always loved shopping for food, but blogging has made it even more interesting.

I do the same thing when I read a newspaper - which is only twice a week in our household. For example this Thursday's Age had a few potential subjects - Coles adding more 'made' food to its offerings, underpayment of restaurant workers, the new food magazine appearing in The Age and potential changes at the Queen Victoria Market. Not that I was only looking for foodie items. I read a whole lot of other stuff as well - but I did notice them more fully than I would have before.

Coles and Woolworths Magazines and the AFR luxury magazines are also a source of inspiration, and advertisements in general. They are fascinating. They are where the big food companies interact with their customers. Where they massage their message, and introduce innovations. Advertising in general is such a fascinating thing.

Television too but perhaps not as much as I am not really allowed to look at food programs, in and of themselves, in the evenings, and I am not about to start watching television during the day. But some programs do throw up the odd thing - like Gruen for example.

It's never enough though which is why I sometimes have to resort to my writer's block overcoming tactics - the lucky dip, first recipe and 'A word from...' posts. Sometimes a challenge, sometimes hugely interesting.

Overall I find it a very satisfying thing - even though the writing is not great, and rambles here and there - it's all stream of consciousness stuff. I don't work at it or edit it, other than for typos and so lots of it could probably be cut - in the words of the great French writer/philosopher, Pascal:

"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." Blaise Pascal

One of my English lecturers at university once wrote at the bottom of the first page of an essay that I had written - "All very interesting, but you haven't said anything yet." Which probably sums up my writing. I waffle.

I have time, but not much discipline. And perhaps I should be doing other things, from the trivial, like weeding, to the worthwhile, like protesting about this and that, trying to change the world.

Post number 887 - Done.