Learning to knit in the past few years, I’ve now got a great collection of knitting blogs in my feed reader. While I’m reading the blogs to learn more about knitting, I’m learning a lot about everything else, including blogging.
In Lamb and Frog’s Knittus Interruptus post, Amber wrote:
Yes, yes, I know. A lot of politics, precious little knitting. What can I say?
Lorelle says “Blog your passion.”
Brenda says “Start as you mean to go on.”
That’s not to say that politics is my (only) passion and that I mean to go on ranting about politics forever. But, as I said in the book review, I’m addicted to democracy. I love this country and the ideas and ideals upon which it was founded. And, after much introspection, I have decided that I am a writer who knits…not a knitter who writes. I can live without knitting…heck, I might even be able to manage living without knitting and crochet. A lifelong ban on those two addictions hobbies would leave me more time for gardening (or as I & the rest of the working class call it…yardwork) and baking. I cannot, however, live without putting what is racing around my head down on ‘paper’…
Do you feel that way?
Are you a writer who knits or a knitter who writes? A doctor who blogs or a blogging doctor? Or maybe you’re a writer who blogs, not a blogger who writes. Even more confusing, eh?
In 2007, Wil Wheaton, actor, author, and blogger, finally came to terms with whether he worked best as an actor or writer or actor-slash-writer. This was magnified when he got a part in the television series Numb3rs as a comic book creator and bad guy. Wrestling with the two sides of his work life, he admits:
…yeah, I know. Weird, isn’t it? For the rest of this week, I’m a working actor. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ll be thinking of myself as a writer the entire time, and not just because it serves the character.
Many of us lead two or more distinctly different lives, but when we come to our blogs, who are we? Amber got it right, as did Wil.
The true definition of what you do, especially with your blog, is defined by your need to “get it down on paper” and share it with others. Your blog is a form of virtual paper, and the need to share our thoughts with the public is what blogging is all about. It’s the difference that makes or breaks a blogger over the long haul.
It doesn’t matter how many lives we have or labels we or others give us. If we choose to blog, we have a writer’s instinctive desire to “put it down on paper” and share it with others. That puts the blogger or writer in our job description – and our life.
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