Creative writing brings me joy. I love to have pen in hand, a blank page, and to freewheel across the page. Later I transfer this into digital format.
I’ve been blogging since 2008 and journalling since about 1996 when I applied myself to writing Morning Pages as prescribed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. I ditch most of the journals because they are full of whingey personal crap where I sort out the problems of my mind.
But when I look back over the blog archive, I think it is a personal account rich in images, metaphor, questions, ideas, and experiences.
But the online landscape has changed and over these recent years it has been overrun with scammers, hackers, criminals, loud opinionators, and stupid promotions and ads for companies and organisations. No, I don’t want to buy your idiotic product or join your ”woke” cause!
Lately I’ve been considering closing down this blog. I want to minimize the risk imposed by hackers and scammers. I loathe the barrage of fake emails, clickbait articles, catastrophized news, and petty advertising. I don’t want to feed the hungry phantom of the negative online world, or AI for that matter.
So maybe this is it? What do you think? See you on the outside?
Riza has a perfect face for vlogging. Through her YouTube videos, Life of Riza, she documents her life in her twenties. She aims for cinematic quality in her stories. These biographical vignettes look simple but when you analyse the sequences you realise how clever she is with her camera work, lighting, video-editing, and finished vlog. Kudos to her and thank you Riza for your efforts.
Is Casey Neistat the Master of the Art of Vlogging? Or have I missed an earlier influencer in this field? He published a vlog every day, and after 800 days got that out of his system. But he still offers informative, action-packed, and authentic vlogs about his life in New York city. I love the way he carelessly throws down his boosted skateboard when he comes into his workspace.
I delved into the work of Digital Spaghetti and discovered Mariza from the Life of Riza. I love her style and honesty.
This led to Natalie Lynn and I watched her whole coming-of-age series titled Borderless.
Previously I have been intrigued with the Aussie caravan travelers, although there are so many that I favour just a couple. My current favourite is the delightful couple of Brad and Hayley of Our Australia Trip. Having travelled Australia in recent years it is nice to revisit (through their experiences) the many places we went and know. I appreciate the movie making work that goes into making the videos for YouTube.
I then discovered belatedly Nick and Mathilde of Next Meridien Expedition. Now these two young French travelers are REAL adventurers, having embarked on a worldwide trip with their Land Rover Albo. They were already two years into their adventure when I stumbled across their YouTube channel. Now in Australia I really admire their positive attitude despite repeated major setbacks, such as needing to install a new engine in Geraldton Western Australia. And they did much of this hard work themselves!
Some others I favour for their quiet simple peaceful videos are The Cottage Fairy and Valerie Lin. The Cottage Fairy lives a quiet rural life but has recently had a baby and is understandably taking a break from her vlogging. Valerie Lin is a young artist, and her paintings are exceptionally beautiful. Her careful videos show her lovely creative process and techniques. She sells her prints online and this helps to sustain this lifestyle.
So as someone with a creative urge that persists into my senior years, I decided to have a go at creating a vlog. And I learnt a lot from going through the process:
Firstly, there is the idea in the minds eye. So, do you story-board it like Riza, or just dive in like Casey?
Then the action to record the moment. This might take one or many shots. What gets in the way; unexpected movements; sounds of traffic, or birds, TVs, or people; weather, something else?
Then there is the expected quality of the image. Do you need formal photography lessons to understand this better? Or will you just wing it? I did take photography lessons before we travelled Australia, but I’m not sure much sank in.
Cameras! Which camera to use? Smart phone? Proper DSLR? Special video camera with extra lenses? GoPro? Underwater camera? Drone? This all gets daunting and expensive. Then there are the sticks, props, tripods, clamps, etc.
Once you have taken the shots you need, then you must save, store, transfer, consider, delete, name, organise, and manage these files. Well as someone with a Masters Degree in Information Management and a solid knowledge of digital preservation, this little exercise is the easy part for me. You’ll need some kind of hard drive and connection for storage and transfer of the files.
Then you load the video clips into the editing software. But which software? There are so many available. The editing process is complex and takes a lot of time. But I suppose the more you do it the faster you become.
You’ll need some music to give atmosphere to the vlogs. Will you need to pay for downloads, royalties, permission, subscriptions? Probably, but there are still some free databases out there. Remember to always cite the creator and source.
So, I plunged in. As it was an experiment, I was not going to spend money on anything. I used my iphone, handheld, didn’t use music tracks, and used iMovie on my iPad to edit it. I uploaded the video to YouTube and shared it with some friends and family.
Grandma’s Winter Vlog 2024
Then I wondered why I had done this. ‘Why?’ is probably the first thing you should consider. Afterall who wants to see some old bird going about her boring daily life? It’s not something I feel I can expand on, so the one vlog might be it.
It was good to go through the process and learn about how this is done. These young vloggers and digital natives make it look so easy.
Being retired from paid employment means I have a lot of time to spend doing these things. I am a strong believer in the Self-initiated Lifelong Learning experience, and being SiLLé, a concept I labelled back in 2015, and it is a remedy for aging well. I am in constant need of a new project to get my mind into. When I was working, I had no time to spare and making vlogs was far from my busy mind.
Anyway, I will continue to enjoy the vlogs of others, liking, sharing, and subscribing to help sustain them in their chosen lifestyles.
Forget Web 2.0! That is so 2005! Now we have Web 3.8. Wow!
What is that? Remember ‘six degrees of separation’? Well, according to Biz Stone, the guys who came up with that theory have done more research and found that in this digitally connected era, the degrees of separation have reduced to just 3.8.
Rich Roll interviews Biz Stone in an intriguing interview where Biz explains his newest website and system – askjelly. Biz Stone is one of the guys who co-founded Twitter. Oh – that Biz Stone!
Askjelly is a systemised knowledgebase that uses people for answers instead of text-based information on the Internet. As Rich and Biz spoke I realised that Librarians might finally be out of a job. The famous quote by Neil Gaiman: ‘Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.’, might finally be defunct. Biz has found a way to crowd-source the subjective questions.
So I put askjelly to the test and posed the question: “What will happen to Librarians in the age of knowledge-bases, ‘jelly’ and AI?”
And shortly thereafter I received two thoughtful replies:
From CallKathy:
And from Chris:
Biz’s theory is that there are not really unique questions, and that someone on this planet will have the answer for you.
He then went on to show how this technology works with Amazon’s Echo and Alexa and it evoked similarities to the AI robot in the movie Her.
Rich Roll has kindly listed a lot of the relevant articles and links in the show notes of his podcast information and it’s well worth a look.
As for the success of #askjelly and the future of Librarianship – only time will tell.
Why write at all? I find I am asking myself this question often these days. How about you?
Writing blogs has become so popular that it is almost impossible to search for information online without getting any blogposts in your search result; even if you try to be clever and refine your search to prevent them. Someone should invent a search engine that can do this – if they haven’t already. If you know of one, let me know.
I love reading blog posts. I find them, in general, to be creative and inspirational. I enjoy reading the ideas of others. The short expression of an idea seems to be enough. If the post is too long I fall victim to #tl:dr (too long: didn’t read).
In fact my time is so full of activity that I have no time to read blogs. My Reader is full of unread posts and I only seem to be steered to read a blogpost via twitter, and even then it requires a clever hook to get me to click on the link. I’d prefer to read people’s blogs but I have to attend to the barrage of emails I receive. Please spare me the email telling me the photocopier in a distant office has a large job – I don’t care and resent the effort required on my part having to delete it.
So why do we write at all? *to communicate *to share *to educate *to change * to amuse *to record *to understand *to create *to set guidelines *to try to make money *to promote *to develop *to learn *to express *to discover *to question *to connect *to ask *to vent *to coerce *to be read *to practice *to improve *to perfect *to explore *to inform *to make people feel…
Solar by Ian McEwan put me in a foul mood last weekend. I hated it. I loathed the main character. I was disappointed with the pathetic inclusion of the scientific concepts. I hated the style of moving the story forward whilst simultaneously backtracking to fill the narrative of the character. I hated the way the story moved on quickly from one scene to the next with no break (or chapter) to indicate this change in the flow. I persisted because I have loved other works by Ian McEwan. Saturday is one of my favourite books. By the end of Solar I despised the main character and felt depressed and uninspired. I expect that loathing the character was the point. Was this the aim of Mr. McEwan? Then don’t bother. I prefer to read literature that is interesting, uplifting, generous, teaches me something, inspirational, innovative, intriging, challenging, clever, or beautiful.
I realise writing a book is a completely different experience compared to writing a short idea or essay for a blog. And reading books too is a completely different experience that requires some commitment. Asking the question “why write?” applies here too though, perhaps more so. What do you want to be your legacy as a writer?
Julia Cameron wrote The Artists Way some time ago now and by following her prescribed three month program, it instilled in me the practice of writing “morning pages”. I think she has inspired many people to do this. So I use the morning pages as first stream-of-consciousness venting. It has had a profound effect on my wellbeing. It is a useful tool to be able to write any junk without concern for being correct in any way. It helps me sort out my thoughts and gets rid of the neurotic junk. I record my dreams sometimes. I plan. I vent. I try to understand. Writing for my blogs is more considered and I try to pick topics to explore and share that I think may interest others. But I keep asking myself why I bother – why any of us bother at all.
Sues Bent 