Blogging

flowers in december by °°k°°.

Blogging, all of a sudden, has as many strange quirks and customs as the real world. There are "right" ways to blog and "wrong" ways, and there even seem to be formulas for how to become rich and successful while blogging. It's kind of silly and kind of maddening. You're supposed to have a theme for your blog if you want to attract more visitors and readers, apparently. You've got to be organized and to only just divulge enough of your life to be enticing but safe.

I guess my problem with blogging "success" (aside from my gratuitous use of unnecessary quotes) is that I always thought of it as a personal journal that happened to be open to the public. That was all. And a personal journal doesn't necessarily have a theme. I mean, perhaps posthumously, with some knowledge about the author, you could summarize the thing sort of generally, like with Anne Frank. She was a girl who matured very quickly during an extremely arduous period both historically and personally. But when I blog or journal, it's generally not with these sort of themes in mind. 13 Years of Clutter was definitely the exception, because I had a specific project to document. But otherwise, my thought process does not work in a way conducive to these themes.

However, I do very much admire people who can channel their intriguing thoughts into this format and garner attention and well-deserved praise for it. With that, here are some of the blogs and sites I have been admiring lately. Some may be repeats, but let's just say it's for the purpose of list-making.

• iCiNG: Inspirational, fashionable and upbeat, Gala Darling's site is everything I could ever want lately. She always links amazing things/people and has a lot of optimism to share.


• Project: Happily Ever After: This lady has decided to create a "project" for the things in her life that cause unhappiness. I like this approach a lot, and the idea that you can consciously change what you don't like about life is appealing to my current mindset.


• Debauchette: NSFW, generally. There is a lot of sex writing in this call-girl/"courtesan"'s blog, but the mystery woman is truly intelligent and sees the world in such an interesting way that I do recommend it, in spite of its inherent controversy. Judge her all you want, judge me for valuing her writing - if you shed your expectations for this blog you may find some really hard-hitting insight about human nature and society.


• Decorating Nature: Less a blog than a quick collection of some amazing, creative photographs. :)


• an aesthetic feast: Fashionable and food-loving, this girl posts such cute things and has a strangely captivating writing voice.


• The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks: Just for fun. :) I love hilarity and irony.