Don't -- and Why

fiLination, a wonderful blog out of Israel done by a total Taiwanophile, blogs on one of the things I said in my post on the presentation at the blogging conference (I didn't make such remarks at the conference). He notes:

Here are some of the highlights from Michael’s presentation:

Most foreigners who blog in Taiwan don’t blog on Taiwan; they blog on their own lives, which happen to be here. Note that it is not a bad thing to not be a blogger; my first advice to would-be bloggers is invariably "don’t."

:) Nasty. I think blogs about life in Taiwan are important. I actually enjoy Michael’s posts and photos about his adventures in Taiwan more than I do politics, even though I do care for how things are in Taiwan.

Several people took that one the wrong way, so, like any media personality, I am going to issue a wave of denials, obfuscations, and clarifications....now where is that dog? Checkers, Checkers, c'mere boy.....

Actually, I didn't mean to be nasty....here's what happened....

Had an interesting talk with a local campus newspaper reporter after the presentation, from Chengchih University. She opened her interview of me by apologizing: "Actually," she said sheepishly, "I don't have a blog." I signaled approval, which triggered further comments along the lines of: "I've found that every word I put on the blog is a word I could have written down in something like this," she said, indicating her notepad, but by inference, implying the newspaper.

And that, in a nutshell, is why my first advice to would-be bloggers is "Don't." It's not arrogance -- but in fact the opposite -- recognition that blogging is not for everyone, and that for many bloggers, it takes away time from being productive doing something else. As a couple of my closest friends are fond of asking, "how much did you make off that last blog post, Michael?" "What's your business model, Michael?" It's a hobby, and for the same reason I don't recommend my personal interests like Chinese porcelain, pre-Columbian archaeology, spiders, early Christian history or Axis and Allies to everyone I meet, I don't recommend blogging for everyone (however, I do reserve the right to post pictures of big beautiful spiders from time to time).

Many people have commented on this in their own blogs. My friend and budding writer Daniel Wallace, who has an excellent blog called Suitcasing, stopped blogging because he found it interfered with his writing. Anyone who wants to experience the anguish of exploring the why of blogging should listen to Daniel's conversation with What's Up in Taiwan founder Henry on this topic. Eventually, WUiT shut down. Just couldn't find a reason to exist. Another blogger I know has said the same thing to me privately -- blogging interferes with his serious writing. So far this has not been the case with me -- I've completed one book and almost finished another, and published stuff in academic journals during the two years I've had this blog. I have plans to turn this blog into a book at some point. Still the "why" question nags constantly at me.

It helps (meaning that I can hold the Why Demon at arms length) that I've evolved pretty desperate clear rationalizations goals about why I blog (Demon to Michael: Quit fooling yourself! You are an addict! And there are no 12 step programs for bloggers! Burn in hell, failed poet! Mwahahahaha!). But on the whole, even if I am not asking myself the why question, someone else is usually asking it of me.

This is not to say: don't blog. But really, my response is intended to make people stop and think: why am I doing this? What's my purpose/goal? Why I am taking up space on servers, bandwidth on the net, and most importantly, time out of my life? And like any other activity, if you don't have a good answer to those questions, why do it? I've been pretty active on the net since the late 1990s, and I've found that it is a huge timestealer, highly addictive, if not properly kept on a leash. Net-based hobbies are not like other hobbies -- if I want to indulge my taste for Jun Ware, I have to wait until a museum has an exhibition. If I want to see big spiders, I have to go hiking. If want to learn about the Gospel of Luke I have to go look up the scholarly literature on it. If I want to play Axis and Allies, I have to find a way to coordinate the activities of five busy adults. But not so the Net. If I want an interaction, I just need to fire up the computer. It's like the caged rat that keeps pressing the bar for the pleasurable sensory stimulation until it dies of starvation......

Soapbox off. Back to our regularly scheduled Taiwan rants....