Why Blog?

Why Blog?
5th April 2009

I have been asking myself this a lot lately. The blog started off as an electronic log book cum photo album of my boating holidays but has become something more.

I do a lot of writing in my professional life but the subject matter is normally rather technical. Its therefore find a release in allowing myself to write about whats in my heart rather than the specialist knowledge in my head, all free of the constraints of editorial censorship or corporate sign off.

I figure that if I can't be out there on the water in person there is no reason why my mind can't cast off from time to time, and the blog allows me to do this. It allows me to record the things that capture my imagination, but within the self imposed discipline of a mandatory watery link. The act of committing my thoughts to virtual paper give them substance and a degree of permanence, often acting as a catalyst for new ideas. Its also an infinately more interesting use of my time as I sit in a Virgin Pendelino hurtling up and down the West Coast Mainline, catching fleeting glimpses of the Grand Union shimmering enticingly in the spring sunshine.

My Blog is therefore, first and foremost, a personal log book, written for my own pleasure. Alfred Wainwright wrote his lovely books on the Lakeland Fells as "something to help me relive my wanderings in old age, when physical infirmity prevents me from going there in person". My Blog is similar - letting me reflect of the highlights of my year during the long cold winter nights.

But of course the medium offers much more than that. It also allows my friends to share my delight in all things watery, with the added bonus of putting me in touch with a hole bunch of new friends.

Long live Blogging. Terry from Brazil summed it up nicely. "I love your blog, its like a window into your life". Thanks Terry, but perhaps that should be a porthole!