P365 – Day 244 – 1/2 way in, I mean 2/3!

I’ve been thinking a lot about my blog lately. Why I’m doing it, whether I’m writing it for any particular audience and whether there’s any point to it.

When I started I had a vague idea about what I wanted to do, and that was for it to be a place where I could put my 365 ‘photo a day’ project. And if you’ve read my ‘to not blog . . . or to blog?’ page, you’ll know that I wanted it be a place to help me remember the past, live in the present and design my future.

Well that’s a lot to expect from a blog.

I think it does a pretty good job of serving as a reminder of what I’ve done every day this year – the present becomes the past. As well as that, I’ve done some trips down memory lane, and I’ve started to create a future for myself through my Happiness Project commitments – although over the last couple of months that’s fallen by the wayside for a variety of reasons.

But the main focus of my blog is the photos. On most days, the writing follows from them. Some days the writing is a description of something I’ve done that day, and other days it might just be a sentence or two explaining the photo. Some days the photos lend themselves to a more detailed examination about some part of me – perhaps being introverted and shy, or some of my long-lost dreams, or my struggles with decluttering my house or setting up my garden, or dealing with my demons . . .

All of that involves sharing myself and my family to some degree or another. Sometimes I simply want to show family members something that Juniordwarf has done, or keep them up to date with our life. Occasionally I have a particular person or people in mind when I’m writing about things we might have discussed previously, and some days I want to let off a bit of steam. It all depends, for the most part, on the photo – although there are times I’ve wanted to write about something in particular, so I’ve taken a photo to suit that topic.

Not everyone will ‘get’ every post, and that’s fine.

When I began blogging, I didn’t know much about blogs, so my understanding about what a blog *should* be came from reading other people’s blogs. I read some wonderful blogs, some by people I know fairly well, but mostly by people I’ve never – or only briefly – met but have gotten to know through the Internet.

There is such a huge range of blogs out there, and different people share different things. Some are totally up-front about who they and their families are, and others use noms-de-plume for themselves and aliases for their family members (speaking of which, I have the most wonderful pen-name under which my novels shall be published . . .).

Some people blog about particular aspects of their life – scrapbooking, gardening, iphoneography – and others are much more of a mixture. Some use their blogs as outlets to let off steam and to share the ups and down of their daily life and the particular challenges they face. Some people blog about ‘hot topics’ at the moment. Some just share photos. Some post whatever they want to post at the time. Most are a combination of many things.

Some of the topics I’ve written about I might not have if I hadn’t seen other people already writing about the same or similar issues. So reading other people’s blogs has helped me to feel more relaxed about sharing some things.

At the same time there’s a couple of my posts that I cringe thinking about how I commented on an issue because other people commented on it, but it really had little relevance to my photo of the day. It wasn’t really in keeping with what I saw my blog as being about, but I let myself be influenced by other people, who write different types of blogs.

But I don’t care, because I like to think that this whole blogging year has been a learning experience for me. I started out being influenced by what I was reading – because I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing – but I think I’ve started to develop my own online personality now. I’m figuring out what works for me and what doesn’t; what I feel comfortable with and what I don’t.

It’s a lot of work – to take a photo every single day and write something about it – and is fairly time-consuming. It’s been a fun project and I’ve really enjoyed doing it. There have only been a couple of days where I’ve thought it was too hard and I didn’t want to do it. There have been a few days where I haven’t had a clue what to take a photo of, but for the most part, there’s been at least one thing that’s stood out for the day.

I’m leaning towards thinking I might not continue the Project 365 approach next year, but I’m not sure. I still have a third of a year to decide.

In the mean time, I’m pretty comfortable doing what I’m doing with this blog. I don’t like to categorise it as any particular type of blog. It’s just my blog and my Project 365.

Now I’ve written the post, what on earth am I going to take a photo of to illustrate it?

Well, that was pretty obvious, wasn’t it!