Back to Blogging

Posted by: Heather Green on June 12, 2006

So, I just took a couple of weeks of vacation. I was in Italy, near Lucca in a little town in the hills called Vorno. It was incredible.

As it happened it was the first time I stopped blogging for an extended period since I began a year ago. I knew it would be nearly impossible to blog, since the place I was staying was in the hills and it didn’t have an Internet connection. And with all the careening we were going to be doing on mountainous Tuscan roads and highways, as we trotted from one town to another, I figured finding Internet cafes wouldn’t be my boyfriend or family’s top priority. So, in preparation, I pulled together some blog posts, and podcasts, and warned Steve that I would be out.

I am not as intensive a blogger as other people online, but for the past year, I have tried to blog at least once a day. When I started, I wanted to be committed to it and I got a lot out of it. And frankly, I think as a journalist these days, you pretty much need to blog, or do a podcast, or be involved through comments.

The experience of time off was great. Just not writing for a while was wonderful, because it makes you step back and remember why you like writing. The only time I felt the pull to read a blog was when I did have to check in for work a couple of times. And it was inexorable. I found myself typing in Buzzmachine, and Kottke, and Micropersuasion. But because I wasn’t swimming in these debates the way I do on a daily basis while at work, I had a distance on this. And that was also an education. Each of the worlds we make for ourselves can become so self-contained. And I think that’s especially true with the Internet, because the contact is so immediate and nonstop.

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