Tuesday's Blog on Blogging

The following was submitted via handheld email device.

----- Original Message -----
From: Stump, James
To: Stump, James
Sent: Mon Jun 04 10:13:24 2007
Subject: Tuesday's Blog on Blogging

So I keep getting sucked further into this electronic universe. I now no longer trust the Feedburner Stats, but have this new counter on the side that keeps track of unique visits (I promise I'm not just doing them all myself). I also have a map that should start generating a list of where people are coming from. I saw this on another blog and thought it pretty cool. I've also gotten an account on Technorati that helps to manage all this stuff. I fear that I could spend hours doing this sort of thing. Just implant a chip in brain!

I guess I'm pretty results oriented. I've kept a journal for many years, writing about similar stuff that no one but myself ever read. I see a lot of value in doing that as a spiritual discipline. So I continue to feel that if I'm blogging in a forest and no one is there to hear the tree fall, I can easily go back to journaling off-line and that part of the merit of blogging won't change. But now there is increased accountability in doing it if there are people out there watching. And it is fun to see that someone actually posted a comment, or that someone in Switzerland visited the site (maybe it was just an automatic search engine... but it is still cool that it was from Switzerland!).

So whereas the internet's first stage was a move toward our entertainment becoming very private (no one sees what I'm doing or looking at), I think this is a pretty health development now in that there is a new openness and accountabilty that is fostered through blogging.