Blog

by Russell Smeaton

Created on: June 25, 2010

When I first started to travel there was no debate about blogs or journals. The option to have a web blog simply didn’t exist. Hotmail had only just come out and the vast majority of the countries I was travelling in had sporadic internet access to say the least. So I, like many others, wrote a journal. It was a great way to try and look cool whilst sitting alone in a cafe. I guess I even had dreams of attempting to publish my travel stories before I realised that there are a many a better writer than myself.

I still have my old journals complete with stains, old tickets and smells of various places. I still love to read them to remember what it was like to be travelling around. They detail the experience in a very personal way. I only intended the journal to be private and so what I wrote was for my eyes only.

So why then have I chosen to side with web blogs? I’m going to attempt to address this debate in my usual rambling and long winded way so be patient, get yourself a cup of tea and I hope you bear with me.

Firstly, the world has changed since when I was a lad. Internet Cafes have sprung up everywhere. Blogs, social networking and general web access is so much more prevalent than it every was and I have whole heartedly jumped on this band wagon. I have a Facebook account, I email on a daily basis and I have even been known to Twitter from time to time.

I often think of a journal as being the most personal – like a private diary. A web blog can still be personal. After all, it is my own web blog. If people want to read it, all the better, but it is ultimately for me to write about what I find interesting. I see this as my online journal. I think culture has changed and it has become more common for us to share our personal life with complete strangers. Look at the rise of reality TV. In England, these are more popular than ever before as our love of other people’s lives reaches new heights.

To write a blog I have to find a place to sit down and write it online – my trusty journal could be updated anywhere from a bus to on top of a mountain waiting for sunrise.  But the problem of locating places to get online is becoming less and less problematic. Most hotels offer wireless connection these days. A recent trip shocked me by the fact that I could get online in a cheap back packers hostel. I was shown to a room full of my fellow unwashed travellers all bashing away at grimy keyboards. Even in China you can find places to get online, despite a great many of the cyber cafes being a bit cagey about letting foreigners in. I think I had to show my passport at one place, but whatever – at least I could get access.

One of the great thing about a web blog is that it can reach out to a great many people. My parents can read about what I’m up to, find out where I am, and make sure I’m safe and healthy. Don’t get me wrong – I still phone them from time to time, email them directly, send postcards and all that. Using my blog saves me from having to write the same thing again and again to my friends or heaven forbid send out those horrendous group emails. I’m not a lazy person. Well, maybe just a little bit lazy. I just think that the blog is a lot more efficient for letting all my friends and family know what’s going on.

People have an active choice about reading my blog. Friends who are interested can have a quick nosey and see what’s going on. Fellow travellers hopefully have a read and can share a chuckle about joint experiences. It’s all a lot more open and I think this can only help build a community of travellers across the world.

The immediacy of blogging is both appealing and off-putting. I can let people know exactly what happens when it happens. But what happens when I come home? I can no longer bore people with my humorous stories about gross toilets and chickens. They already know the story. People can see the blurry photos hot off the press but we no longer have a few drinks pouring over recently developed snap shots.

When all is said and done, I still keep my journal. I find this ideal for whipping out from time to time to jot down things that I’ve seen so I don’t forget them later (which I would do). Alas there was no option in this debate to sit on the fence as I would have preferred to opt for that. There is certainly a time and place for both and until I can fork out for a super tiny laptop that will withstand being thrown on top of a bus I’ll stick with using both. In the meantime, I do find myself using the blog more and more as time goes on and I guess I think this will gradually replace the keeping of a journal.

So have I reached a conclusive answer? I don’t really think so. I still use my journal on a regular basis. But I do find myself using my blog and my Facebook account more and more frequently. Will the time come when I stop writing with a pen and only a keyboard? Is this a bad thing? I’ll tell you when it happens – on my blog!

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