Today, I digress from baseball. Quit reading now if you want to.
First, a little background. It is 6:30 on Sunday morning. I have decided that Sunday would be a good day for me to write a blog entry each week. It is generally a quieter, more relaxed day than others. I try to spend Sunday mornings with my daughter and grandchildren going to church while my son-in-law works (he’s a pastor). Then there is usually a baseball game in the afternoon, and often there are cards to be played while the game is on. So if I am going to write, it needs to happen first thing in the morning. Anyway, I woke up this morning and thought about my blog but I did not have any particular baseball-related topic I felt like writing about. So this question came to mind.
Why do you choose to read what you do—particularly online? I remember when the Internet first became an everyday tool. I remember thinking that there was way too much information online—no one could ever read it all! Really, I thought that. I like to think of myself as a very organized person: quite methodical, a list maker. You know all the signs. Can you imagine, then, my dismay that there was no table of contents for the Internet. There was no way for me to know that I had read everything available on a subject, that I had all the information I needed to make informed decisions.
Jump ahead only 20 years and imagine that I am now part of that same Internet. It is truly amazing. I am still intimidated by the fact that you can Google (or even that Google is now an acceptable verb) “Jean Gabler” or “Knothole View” and find my thoughts and writings. The reason I am facing the task of writing a 5,000-word book chapter on my love of baseball is because of the Internet. I was discovered and identified as a woman in Minnesota who loves the game of baseball and follows the Minnesota Twins. Imagine that!
I have one short story that brought this whole thing home to me a short time ago. My son Jason (“Jay Gabler,” to the Internet world; above is a photo of the two of us at Fenway Park in 2007) is a prolific online writer and has many venues that he writes in (some might even call him ubiquitous). Anyway, he was on Twitter one day and mentioned that someone living below him was making Chex Mix that he was yearning to share with them. A short time later he received a response—from Chex Mix! Not only is that very weird, but it means that someone who works for the company that makes Chex Mix is on Twitter regularly (if not 24/7) watching for mentions of their product. That feels very much like Big Brother to me.
What brought me here today is wondering whether it is more important to write a blog entry at least once a week, or to write my blog when I have something of interest to readers. I have been writing The Knothole View for two years now. The first summer that I was writing I spent quite a bit of time in one blog entry writing about the Twins games that week: winning, losing, scoring, not scoring, etc. After I submitted that blog entry Jason, who is also my editor, told me that while it was fine, it was not what I should be doing with my blog. I was very relieved to hear that no one was waiting for my blog to come out to find out who won the game the day before. Jason explained that my blog is really about my thoughts and feelings about baseball in particular and life in general.
When in doubt about something, I tend to go to the dictionary. So here is the definition of blog from Merriam Webster: a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.
Please note the hyperlink above. I think my blog is a little short in that department but otherwise, I have it covered. So I am going to try to be more consistent in writing my blog entries this summer. But if I don’t have anything nice to say, I won’t say it. Hope that is okay.
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