Every few years since by first blog in January 2006 I stop to think what I have done and where I am going with it.
In 2006when I began, my digitally (besides having nice hands) inclined friend Tim Bray advised me to add an RSS feed that would sit as a button on the right hand top of my blog which has always been ancillary to my webpage.
The purpose of the RSS feed is that in 2006, when blogs were popular, people could “subscribe” and they would instantly know when you wrote a new one. Newspapers and other media used these RSS feeds. They are now all but forgotten. At the height of the blog revolution I may have had, according to Blogger (my blog is a Google owned Blogger) over half a million readers in a month. That is now gone.
In this twenty first century those who may follow my blog do so by noticing my links in Facebook, Twitter and a good blogging platform called Medium. If I do not link to my blog the majority of those who follow me think I have not blogged.
Then there is the quality of those who participate in social media. As an example I may write a blog (I have written many) on Argentine writer Jorge Luís Borges. In Facebook, unless there is a really sexy photograph illustrating the blog it will mostly be ignored. In Twitter within minutes at least 75 to 100 will have seen (whatever that means) it.
Now, all these years later I know exactly what my blog is and what its purpose is. I had to think of a book called Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld that I bought in Buenos Aires in 1966. The book was the printing of his journal that was found after his death in his desk in 1961. Thinking back the idea that he either did not have the plan to publish his journal or overlooked doing it firmly made me realize that my blog is really one of those “Dear Diary” kind of journals. I jot down my day and what has been an influence in that day. I like the Spanish word bitácora which is sort of a “ship’s log”.
My family objects many times to some of the personal stuff I may write about them or the pictures of them that I will place in my blog without their express permission. If my diary was a locked inside my desk kind of diary they would not know until I would be long gone.
The reason for this is that blogs in this century, particularly when they are put into social media, become dear diaries that one can spy on.
Some of my blogs I have passed by my friend and very good lawyer Christopher Dafoe.
My blog then is my personal legacy. I have instructed my daughters on how to pay the yearly web-hosting and domain name fees.