It follows: I blog, I run, I storian, I vote

Oct 30, 2008

On my Facebook space, a friend asks why I’m not blogging as much these days.

Another friend, writing on his own blog, answers the same question — read Paul Jones on Twitter ate my blog!:

I thought, at first, that Twitter would be mostly me communicating with a few friends, like say group IM. But it wasn’t too long before Twitter became more of a timely way to share snips of news and information. A place to ask questions and give answers. One blog function done right there.

Find my Twitter updates at http://twitter.com/mistersugar.

And then there’s Andrew Sullivan, who gives us a convert’s testimonial to blogging, in his essay in the redesigned The Atlantic, Why I Blog:

You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, just as correspondence could be—but usually posthumously, or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public.

I think about my own blogging most when I’m running on weekends now. What stories can I share? What observations tell?

On Tuesday I attended The Monti, more than 150 people filling Spice Street restaurant to hear six storytellers and their sibling-themed reminiscences. I sat with two sisters who’d grown up on a sheep ranch in eastern New Mexico. A couple of weeks ago, I met three sisters nestled on a bench at the Duke Clinic, proud of the sis who’d survived breast cancer and amused by my too-swift pace that day. My four brothers — one in Pennsylvania, one in Arkansas, two in Arizona — should come to North Carolina to share a beer with me.

Today I voted, for Barack Obama. My state is a battleground — every state should be — and I’m excited for the possibilities. In the polling station, the poll workers clapped when a first-time voter presented himself or herself. That’s democracy. That’s something to blog about.

Anton Zuiker ☄