Some Reasons That Blogging Is Awesome, Especially in a Pandemic -- Garbo

Blogging may save your marriage. No matter how much someone loves you, it's unlikely they they want to hear you explain how many devices exist to help people make versions of golf balls in the form of ice cubes, candy, silicone toys, dollhouse miniatures, and so many more. 

Better parental communication. Your children are not as likely to slump into the sofa and stare into their phone screens if you refrain from extolling how great your favorite cartoon characters were when you were a kid. But if you make a blog about Snagglepuss, you'll have people tdebate episode rankings with online. 

 It's free. So many hobbies, from gardening to collecting things to music, can easily run into money. You can pay to blog on platforms with special features you want, but there are a number of free sites, or sites with a tier structure so you can start off free and then go premium later if you want. 

From my personal experience, bloggers are less prone to tech failure than podcasters are. Making, editing, and distributing a podcast involves a number of precise steps. One thing goes wrong and the whole podcast can go kerblooey. Blog tools are usually built-in and fairly goof-proof, though having a backup draft is highly recommended. 

You don't have to be personally  marketable to attract readers to your blog. Sure, you can write books and sell them through digital publishing sites, but to compete in the crowded field of virtual publishing, you've got to be Somebody --  or seem to be Somebody, anyway. On the other hand, you can be anybody at all and still blog. Mr. Tweedy, for example, could have had a blog if the personal computer had been invented in his heyday.

In other forms of social media, you're shut out if you don't know every in-joke, cultural reference, acronym, or celebrity. Most blog posts I read about about things that have already happened, sometimes a really long time ago. 

In my view, blogs are better for society than post-and-run blips.  Generally, blog posts take a little longer to read than posts to Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and leave readers less anxious and with some kind of takeaway besides a feeling that one's scrolled away an hour without noticing. 

Blog posts are wonderfully editable. Get the name of an author wrong or set a historical event a hundred years too early, and only realize it much later? Go back three months and change the info.  No need for a big old public correction. Dare to be wrong! Just go fix it later. Be like Emily Littela. 

Blogging is especially suited for a pandemic, when a lot of us are at home again today. Just for starters, it can help alleviate loneliness. 

Also, posting to a blog once a day or once a weekly can orient you during the pandemic and give you a bit of a schedule with a (flexible) deadline.  This helps you feel less like a victim of amnesia on a soap opera, or Scrooge on Christmas morning. 

Next week: Gonna blog about something else, because I like it!

                                                          Garbo