Before the former secretary of an Australian toastmasters club beat me to it, I have registered www.joannageary.com.
At the moment it points to this here blog and, I suspect, that’s exactly how things will stay for the forseeable future. The old one http://joannageary.wordpress.com still works, of course.
So…not really news I suppose, but it’s the first time I’ve registered a domain name, so I felt the need to share.
My blog post on the new Birmingham Post website is still doing the rounds and has now been picked up by the Journalism.co.uk website. Even if it is just a nib (news in brief), I’m pleased.
Strangely, what tickles me about it the most is seeing myself referred to as simply “Geary”.
Now I know that’s the convention for many papers (not ours), but when you see it used for yourself it seems rather odd and I can’t really explain why.
Is it because it makes me sound like a convicted criminal/football player? I’m not sure. I’m going to have to think this one through!
So, there I was: ploughing through my Google Reader in an attempt to find something to blog about.
I found something on Martin Stabe’s site about the NUJ possibly admitting their first full-time blogger.
“Ah-ha!” thought I, “something that would work as a blog post”.
Then I realised what I was doing.
It’s all gotten the wrong way around. The thing is this whole blogging marlarkey was meant to be a repository for the thoughts I was having during my day-to-day life. It was NEVER supposed to be a hungry monster that I had to feed with new material.
I think the problem has arisen because (through uncontrolled events) this blog appeared on the radar of Post & Mail bigwigs rather early on. Too early on, to be honest (sorry, to those I know may be reading this).
I had hoped to keep it relatively quiet for a few weeks, maybe months, to find my feet with it. Perhaps that was a bit naive really.
And, to be honest, it is great how supportive and enthusiastic everyone has been and how happy they are about letting me get on and do my own thing.
BUT, of course, knowing that these people are reading the blog has sort of messed up my perception of it.
It’s gotten even more complicated since I blogged about the NUJ and started appearing on their radar. Don’t get me wrong, the debate has been fun – I’ve always longed to have the opportunity to thrash out my views in this way.
But the result is that it’s changed the way I approach the whole blogging thing. I realised the “let’s blog about the NUJ story”, was me doing what I’ve been trained to do – writing specifically for those people I think are reading.
That’s turned my blogging into out-and-out publishing and I don’t like that at all.
There are things I like – the Any Qs and Answers for example. But I don’t want to feel bad or guilty about blogging about fireworks, my cold or something someone said on the bus. They may be the last thing other people want to read about, but then this wasn’t really done for anyone else.
I’ve liked the fact that I feel part of a community of people online, but I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should have blogged anonymously. I don’t really know, maybe I’m just trying to have my cake and eat it.
After 50 days of blogging, I’m back feeling angsty about the whole thing. đ
Well… hardly. But still. Aargh!
Not a fan of being captured on camera, this came as a bit of a shock. While googling “Birmingham Post“, I came across this clip from something called Business and Learning Connections: http://youtube.com/watch?v=bl_Y7r2-y7Y (embedding disabled for some reason).
Mostly it’s our editor Marc Reeves but check out the girl with the dangly earrings! I almost choked on my lunch! That be lil’ ol’ me before I dyed my hair (which means it must be over a year old). And yes, my desk is ALWAYS that messy.