Love in Present Day Blogging #AtoZChallenge

The team decided our theme for this month's posts here would be a take "2020 visions of blogging." This set of weekday posts focuses on:

Blogging in the Present

Blogging in the present is so ridiculously difficult. My most successful years of A to Z have been when I wrote all of my posts before April so I could dedicate more time to interacting with bloggers instead of trying to stay caught up. I planned to do the same for my blog posts here. Except...I didn’t. I don’t know why, but there wasn’t inspiration. So I let it go, made sure I knew when I was due for another blog, and didn’t stress about it.

But now that the time has come to write my post for L, I am glad that I didn’t write this one in advance. The world looks very different now than it did a month ago (particularly for those in the hardest hit areas for the dreaded virus). Life is so different. So whereas my blog posts written over the last few months haven’t been impacted, this post definitely is.

As I have viewed blogs from all over the world these last few weeks, I have seen many people struggling with how to handle this worldwide crisis. Address it? Pretend it isn’t happening? (For the purposes of blogging, of course.) The truth is, there isn’t one right answer. Each blogger has to decide for themselves if they will dive into a fantasy world of fiction (as I have) or stay in the reality of the world we live in today. But what I have seen, and hope to continue to see, is an outpouring of love. Love for fellow humans. Love for fellow bloggers. Stay safe and spread some blog LOVE.

And please share with us something you LOVE today.

~Jayden R. Vincente (adult fiction writer)

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Keeping the Tradition #atozchallenge

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The team decided our theme for this month's posts here would be "2020 visions of blogging." This set of weekday posts focuses on:

Blogging in the Present

Whether you blog several times a day, several times a month, or several times a year, you're keeping the great tradition of blogging alive. Whether your blog is for music or politics or memoir or poetry or cat pictures or anything else, you're participating in a vital function of the Internet: bringing people together. Blogging has been around since the foundation of the Internet, but even before that, there were LISTSERV mailing lists, bulletin boards, Usenet newsgroups, chat rooms and many other ways of communication across the Internet. Even as those earlier forms of communication became Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, which further morphed into Instagram and TikTok and WhatsApp, blogging remains.

Why? Because blogging fills a need that neither the old forms nor the newer forms of electronic communication accomplish: It presents the blogger as an individual. Your blog is your living room. When people come to your blog, they're coming to see you specifically. Can Facebook say the same?

There will always be a need for a place where people to fully express themselves, and in the face of occasionaly-draconian Terms of Service at social media sites limiting what you can say, your blog is your own platform where you can get away with saying about anything you want. Terms of Service on blogging platforms are far more liberal, giving you more of a free rein over what you say and how you say it.

So, let's continue this tradition and express ourselves freely, while we still can.

Do you feel that you can say anything you want on your blog?

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Here and Now ( #AtoZChallenge )

Thoughts on blogging in the present...







The team decided our theme for this month's posts here would be a take "2020 visions of blogging." This week posts focus on:

 Blogging in the Present

Here and Now

           Periodically we see the statement made that "Blogging is Dead (or dying).  I don't think so.  Since blogging is often a very personal and individualistic enterprise I think it is inevitable that some bloggers burn out, give up, or let their blogs languish on hold as a blogger waits for inspiration or ambition to rekindle. 

              What I've observed in my 10 1/2 years of blogging is that while bloggers may come and go or some seem to vanish and then reappear sometime later with their personal reason for doing so, the totality of the world of blogging remains consistent as bloggers either blog like they always have or their blogs transition and grow with the times.

              Perhaps there is an illusion of a death or diminishing of blogging on the whole because we as bloggers fall into communities where we have our circles of blogging friends that we try to visit as much as possible or who we see commenting on our blogs with a certain regularity.  The complacent blogger is limited to the world they know best and as they settle into their routine of blogging they may rarely if ever seek out new blogs.  As bloggers within a community fade away, there is a sense that the entire realm of blogging is disappearing.

            Those new blogs are out there I'm sure--I no longer dig up the new ones like I used to because I too have become a complacent lazy blogger.  If it were not for the annual A to Z Challenge, I as well as you might never encounter a blog that has been previously unknown to us.   Though I have no quantitative data to back up my claim, I think blogging remains strong in the here and now.  You might have to look outside the community in which you have become ensconced to find those new-to-you blogs.  Blogging after all involves some action on the part of you the blogger to keep finding more blogs.   As always, there are more than you will ever be able to read or explore.

         From your experience, what is the best way to find "new" bloggers?  How has your blogging community changed since you first started blogging?   Do you think blogging is dead or dying?




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Feasibility #AtoZChallenge

The team decided our theme for this month's posts here would be a take "2020 visions of blogging." This set of weekday posts focuses on:

Memories from Blogging in the Past

Feasibility of Blogging

When I first heard of the A to Z Blog Challenge, I thought it would be insane for me to try to participate in such an activity. It was not feasible! Not in the least!

Why?

Because I didn’t have a blog.

So on March 5^th, 2015, I created a blog. I made three posts, and then dove headfirst into the A to Z Blog Challenge. I have made some internet friends who have been an incredible inspiration through blogging. And now, five years later, my blog still gets the most hits during the A to Z Blog Challenge.

See those tall lines? That's April.

I will be forever grateful for the interaction with other bloggers, and I am awed that I get to be part of the team to help bring it out to all of you. Without this community, it would not be feasible for me to keep blogging year around.

What makes blogging feasible for you?

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