My First Blog, March 30, 2010

Every once in a while, I am made aware that my readers don’t know how to characterize what I write – especially when it comes to my daily “Oysterville Daybook” which appears on my website and, also, on Facebook. Usually it is ‘published’ (as in communicated to a third party) first thing each morning in time for people to read it online with their morning coffee.  But, readers may run across it anytime – sometimes months or even years after its original posting date.  My understanding is that each posting will be in “the cloud” (whatever that is) forever, available a finger-tap away.

“Oysterville Daybook” is a blog – defined by Merriam Webster as a website containing a writer’s experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other websites – and you are reading it right now.  I think of it as an online journal or diary.  In my “Oysterville Daybook” I try to convey my experiences and observations accurately, but at the end of the day, they are my opinions only – biased, to be sure, to the extent that it’s my world view that my blogs reflect.

Yesterday’s Blog, September 1, 2017

The term ‘weblog’ was coined in 1997 to describe a log written online, and  the term was soon shortened to “blog.” Numbers of blogs began to emerge in the late nineties coinciding with the advent of web publishing tools which made posting web content easy for non-techies like me. I began my “Oysterville Daybook” in March 2010.  I don’t know how many blogs were being posted then, but by 2011, there were 173 million blogs worldwide!

There are all sorts of blogs – political, business, military, school, sports, how-to and on and on.  I would characterize “Oysterville Daybook” as a ‘personal’ blog that deals with a variety of topics of interest to me.  It is named for the place from which it emanates (i.e. where I live) and from the name of one of my all-time favorite ‘memoirs’, The Daybooks of Edward Weston. I think some blog writers are paid for their work.  I am not paid – except in the kind and enthusiastic comments by my readers.

Today’s Blog in Progress – September 2, 2017

Of course, my blog is not the only thing I write.  I began it to draw attention to those other things – specifically to build readership for my books which are mostly about the history of Southwest Washington.  Little did I know that the “Oysterville Daybook” would take on a life of its own.  And little did I know that people would confuse my blog writing with the journalistic writing I occasionally do for our local paper.  Just yesterday, I was asked in angry tones why I hadn’t given “both sides of the story” in one of my blogs.  The short answer: “because it’s a blog.”  If you are confused by that answer, begin reading this particular blog again.  From the top!