Blogging as Art

I’ve been a little frustrated with blogging lately. Ideas (at least recently) is difficult to come by, and sometimes putting my thoughts into words just seem so difficult. But I wanted to start writing creatively again, so I guess I need to stop making excuses and just write. I need to fight the predisposition to just lie in bed and not exert any effort, which gets worse the longer I don’t do anything, which makes writing an even more difficult exercise than before. But I also realize that sometimes I just really need to do it, regardless of the quality of the output; otherwise, I might as well pack up and stop blogging.

Which I have no intention of doing really. I love this blog. I’ve just been lazy.

The problem with blogging in general is that it is usually a one-person affair, and if you are incapable of sustaining a certain number and frequency of posts, then the online space just dies a natural death. Not death in the sense that you’d stop writing, that’s really up to you, but more of a lack of readers interested in your work. And to people who say that they don’t care about having readers, they just want to put their thoughts on paper, I say that’s BS: of course you want readers. Maybe not a lot, maybe just your friends, maybe even just one stranger or two, but you still want readers. Otherwise, having a blog is pointless. Why not just write in a journal? A blog is necessarily a public space, which means you aim to share it with the public (even if public meant a select group of friends). It’s similar to that philosophical question regarding trees and forests: If a blog doesn’t have readers, does it have a point?

And because a blog is necessarily a medium that requires readers, then perhaps some standards need to be put in place. Why do anything if you’re only going to be half-assed about it? Might as well give it your all. That applies to blogging, as with anything else.

Which brings me to my real point: that blogging can, and should be, elevated to an art form, in the same way that fiction, or poetry, or non-fiction narratives are considered legitimate art work. Some people have a tendency to look at blogs as hobbies, which isn’t a bad thing, but I feel that bloggers tend to limit themselves by thinking that a blog is only just a means to create something else, rather than the end result itself. I get that, and one of the primary reasons I blog is to practice my writing skills so I can get better. But it doesn’t mean that we should instantly assume that a blog as a medium is less than a poem, or a story, or a book, or a magazine. Some of the best blogs out there connect with me on a fundamental level, whether psychological, or emotional, or spiritual, and who is to say that that connection is less than valid simply because it’s made in a blog? When the aim of your work is to connect with strangers on an essentially human level, where does the hobby stop, and art begins?

It’s interesting how similar the aims of artists and bloggers can be. And those aims are, at their core, based on a love for the act of creation.

So this is my proposal. I suggest that bloggers stop thinking of blogging as less than any of the other more mainstream art forms out there. We are all artists, whether we accept the title or not. We create and we destroy as well as any other. Blogging can be the future of art, and we, the bloggers, will determine its success or failure.

Featured photo taken here.