What is a Blog?

I have been blogging for decades. I just didn’t know it.

30, 40, 50 years ago I ‘blogged” by writing letters. My family received letters from all corners of the Earth. No pictures, but weekly or monthly blogs. My friends received letters, or maybe postcards. Fewer words, but at least an image from what I was experiencing. And acquaintances and clients might receive a postcard every year or so, usually sent when I was in some far flung exotic location or another. On some trips, over the course of four or five or six months, I might mail as many as a thousand missives. A huge number, right? But only a small fraction of the population of people I know, or might someday know.

The last 10 or 15 years, I have “Blogged” on Facebook. Here I was allowed the luxury to be image rich, sharing photographs from my actual journeys, supplemented by a few sentences for each image. This was better. My family could see what I was doing, sometimes on a daily basis. My “Friends” could see what I was doing too, both my “in-person” friends, as well as my extended Facebook friends (many of whom I have never met).

But Facebook is passé. Only for “old” people. At least, that is what my children have told me. “Dad, nobody uses Facebook anymore.” Again, it is time to evolve.

So now, it is on to a “real” Blog. Sometimes, it will be daily, other times I may be less prolific. It will depend on what I am doing.

And where to next? Well, some of my friends are telling me I have to start Tiktok-ing. (Is that even a verb?) Others have told me I should send out Tweets, start a YouTube channel, become a guru on platforms I have never heard of before. And my kids Snapchat. Bottom line is, I do not know where this journey will end.

All I do know is, I am giving my friends, family, clients, acquaintances, and others an opportunity to see what is going on in my life, to follow what I am doing, to share in my adventures. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” This is my rose. This is my blog.