Bloggin' up tha riot

"Imagine trying to telephone your grandmother, and over the telephone explain to your grandmother how to set the video recorder if you knew that she didn't have a video recorder, but she did have a cake."

That was how Dave Gorman likened trying to explain to an elderly creationist in San Diego the concept of Googlewhacking -- and it was a similar experience trying to explain to my therapist was a blog is.

He encourages me to write, to write pretty much anything, although he likes to suggest compulsively writing letters to newspapers. It was only this week when he asked me directly if I have been writing that I told him I blog. He was very curious, naturally having heard a lot about blogs but not being able to understand in theory what one was. I explained the idea of journalling online, and how for me this is the main idea behind blogging.

But it's also more than that, it's a place where I try to employ my creative writing skills and sometimes techniques I learned as a journalist. I write primarily for own peace of mind, but also try to write for an audience -- I want what I write to be readable, engaging and interesting, at least some of the time. And moving forwards I try to write about the things I am passionate about, and not just moan that I don't know what I'm doing with my life, or complain about girls I've never met that wouldn't agree to marry me.

The trouble is, blogging isn't simply journalling and trying to explain about alternative news sources, industry-insider blogs and bloggers who want to be columnists/novelists -- or even bloggers who already are -- is all quite difficult when the person you are talking to has no real idea what a blog is to begin with.