Reflection is one of the things my friends and I joke about constantly, as at our old school it was basically all we did. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but we reflected on so many things that it became habit to reflect on our reflecting. When asked to write a blog post comparing where I was when I began my blogging journey to where I am now, at the end of it, I first put it off until today because of the PTSD that reflecting brought upon me (just kidding, it’s not so bad). Then I couldn’t come up with an idea. Blogging hasn’t changed my life. It’s been sort of a nice outlet and a reason to write, and it’s been the homework that I get done first because I actually enjoy it. However, I probably won’t continue blogging after this assignment is over, mostly because I don’t have time.
As I sit at my kitchen table eating lime Tostitos tortilla chips and look vaguely out the window at the backyard where my dog freaked out at me when I came home from school today, I try to remember where I was at the beginning of this year, blog-wise. I’m left with nothing. Despite the fact that I was excited for this assignment before the school year even began, that’s what the blog is: an assignment. I’m generally a believer in doing things for yourself. Not meaning ‘don’t do anything nice for other people,’ but more like ‘do things because you want to, not because you want it on your college application or because someone told you to.’ Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, and that’s why I said generally. Anyway, the fact is that this blog wasn’t my own brain child. Or rather, it was, but the idea to have this brain child was put there by someone else. It is for this reason that I believe I did not get a whole lot from this experience. I did think it was fun, though.
If I’ve learned anything from this whole shebang, it’s that having interesting writing isn’t really about your topic, but way more about how you write about it. This I mostly learned from reading my classmates' blogs than writing my own. I can read someone's post about practically nothing and enjoy it, while others that should be interesting put me to sleep.
Furthermore, even though style is super important, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and structure are still needed. To get your awesome point across, you have to make sense, and the best way to do that is to follow the guidelines set in place for you by whoever came up with the English language. I’ve found through reading other people’s blogs that someone can have a really cool idea or experience, or even just a way of writing that’s intriguing, but the point doesn’t make it to the reader’s end of the fax machine because of all of the grammar and spelling errors. It’s a balance that takes practice and skill. Nowhere is this balance, or lack thereof, more noticeable than in blogging. Blogging requires style and character to be interesting, and it is clear that many people stop there. Because it’s not an essay, they disregard the conventions that we learn in English class, despite the fact that it is an assignment (and that you should always use what you learn, especially in English, because it's actually important).
I’ll stop here to say that English is my first language, that my mother is a grammar-obsessed person just like me, and that spelling (she says as she types s[e;;omg) and the rules of grammar have alway come naturally to me. This post isn’t to complain about other people’s clear disregard for the rules and to point out that they’re ruining their lives by not knowing how to use a semi-colon; none of that is true. I honestly believe that grammar and spelling are totally random, and although I *cringe* when somebody says “your so sweet,” I still know what they mean. This whole thing is simply the main observation I’ve made through my blogging experience. Mr. Parker, I don’t know if that's what you wanted us to get out of it, but it’s what I got. Other than that, it’s been good to have something to write on a regular basis besides Vital Vocabulary. No, my life would not be vapid without this blog, but it’s been a good time. I think it’s helped develop my style of writing, and honestly from here on out I think I need to work on varying my sentence length, because these are pretty darn long.
Thanks for the good time to all of my adoring fans. (I know you’re out there.) The power went out and I have no means of posting this at the moment, but I’ll get it up ASAP.
Cheers,
 |
| To the road ahead... or whatever. |
Sam
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