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“WRITING OURSELVES INTO EXISTENCE”
Developing your own skills and knowledge has never been easier. In fact it has never been more in our own interests to build skills and capabilities as the world of work becomes more unpredictable. The web gives us access to all sorts of wonderful resources for learning but it does more than this. It helps us understand ourselves and the world around us in context. It helps us make sense of things. It helps us “be” more.
There is something about the process of blogging that makes you more self-aware. You become more thoughtful about yourself and your place in the world. In the reactions of others to your writing you get a different perspective, possibly for the first time, on how others see you. While this can be scary at first it can also be liberating. David Weinberger, one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto – the classic book explaining the Internet and its impact on society – once described blogging as “writing ourselves into existence”. This is very much how it feels. It is like being at university. Yes you were there to learn the formal stuff, but most of the benefit came from having the luxury of time to discover yourself before the world of work started to mould and shape you. Blogging gives you a little of that space back. Space to be yourself. Space to discover yourself. The ability to “try out” different aspects of yourself in relative safety.
Being able to see changes over time in what is effectively an online diary is fascinating ...
