Why Have A Blog?

Sometimes I ask myself why I have a blog. Texas Liberal takes time and effort. Is it worth the time and effort?

For anyone who runs a blog, or is considering starting a blog, the reasons for doing so will be specific to the individual.  Here are my reasons—

1. To communicate—I think it’s basic to human beings to have ideas and knowledge they wish to commuincate to others. A blog is a way to accomplish this goal.

Is it the best way? That’s up to you. You might be better off writing letters to friends and family or communicating your ideas and values by volunteering for a cause. 

Blogging can be selfish. You have to decide if the time you’re spending on the blog is worth what you could otherwise do with your time.  

 2. To Oppose— As I’ve said, your reasons to blog will be personal. For me, this new form of expression offers a chance to stand in opposition to traditional structures of power that in my view have often let people down.

I also feel why have this new form of expression if the purpose in the end is to simply integrate yourself with the powers that already be? 

None of this means that I don’t get on board for some causes.  Many things in life are good and I try to support them when I’m able.

However, for reasons that don’t matter much here, opposition is where my personality and my feelings about the world often take this blog.

Here is a link to Reporter’s Without Borders Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents.

(None of this matters much if you’re not running a political blog. What I’m getting at here are a few political blogs I’m acquainted with that don’t seem to be much more than extensions of the Democratic Party. That’s fine if that’s what you want to do. It might even be helpful in many ways. It’s simply not what motivates me as a blogger.)    

3. Because it is enjoyable to have a blog— Unless you are somehow saving the world, or at least helping a lot of people in some way, why have a blog if it is not fun? 

4. To build an audience—I think you’d have to be pretty humble not to care how many people are reading your blog. While I’ve never gotten around to putting a more specifically detailed counter on the blog, I do check the number of page views I get as determined by WordPress. So far for October, I’m at just a shade under 400 page views per day. ( If you’ve reached this post by a search engine, please click here to get to the top of the blog and consider becoming a regular reader.)

While I’ll be working to grow the blog, it is satisfying that for whatever reasons something like 300 people a day are visiting Texas Liberal. 

It’s totally up to you what size audience you are looking for from your blog. You might be happy enough that anybody at all reads it. Such a view might be a sign of good mental health.  

5. To create something of value and interest —If a poem or a movie can be a work of art, why not a blog? This is not to say Texas Liberal is a work of art. It is though, I hope, creative in some ways. You can define your blog any way you choose. It’s natural to want to be creative.   

6. To run drawings of the pre-historic Terror Bird—It’s your blog. You can do what you wish.   

If you start a blog, give it time to find the voice you are truly looking for. It can be difficult to be creative and informative in the way you’re hoping to accomplish without making posts you feel did not work out as you had guessed.

Yet if you stick with it you’ll likely attract some readers, be of use to somebody who is looking for what you are saying and make some new friends along the way.

Plymouth Rock: Did Malcolm X Lift A Line From Cole Porter?

 

I was listening a few days ago to Cole Porter’s Anything Goes.

Here are the first few lines from that famous song written in 1934—

Times have changed,
And we’ve often rewound the clock,
Since the Puritans got a shock,
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today,
Any shock they should try to stem,
‘Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.

Now here is Malcolm’s famous line about Plymouth Rock–

We’re not Americans, we’re Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock–that rock landed on us”   

Hmmmm. Do you think Malcolm sat around listening to Cole Porter? You never know.

I’ve seen Plymouth Rock a few times. Though if you’ve seen it once, you’ve covered it for a lifetime. You’re seeing it in the photo above.

Here is a link to a Malcolm X reading list.

Here is a link to a Cole Porter reading list.