Blogging for the New Year

I'm taking a friend to the doctor's later on this afternoon, but I have some time now to think a bit about the experience of blogging and what I'd like to do this year.

My blog was born on April 1, 2007. In my first post, Why Today?, I said I wanted my blog to be a way for me to stay in touch with the political life of our city and how it affected poor and homeless people; I thought a new job would take me out of the mainstream. That hasn't been quite as true as I feared, but blogging has certainly helped me to keep focused.

At first I thought I had to write everything myself and it took me a while to realize I could link to great material from other blogs, websites and news sources. What a lot of great writing and organizing is taking place in the blogosphere!

When I started blogging I didn't know about the advice to find and develop a niche in the blogging world and now I'm glad I didn't. Of course I want people to read my blog; I want my blog to be relevant to our local struggles, but it's become more a reflection of who I am and what I care about than I anticipated. On the other hand, I have not yet subjected my readers to my struggles as a self-taught person to understand physics! Maybe some day.

Most of my posts have been about homelessness and poverty, with anti-racist struggles and the environment following closely behind. Animals, gardening and poetry also make appearances. What I see out of my own eyes remains more significant to me than what I read.

So: for the coming year:
-- I am happy to report that Arise for Social Justice has totally reorganized and will be opening a new office on State St. soon. I'll have plenty to write about that.
-- Homelessness, housing and poverty remain number one on my list. I hope to provide a lot more information than I have to date about struggles and successes around the world.
-- A world to live in: we still have a chance to save this planet. Everything matters: what we do personally, the choices our local elected officials make (or don't make), energy production, water use-- I could go on and on. This year I want to look at Springfield's direction. We get to call ourselves a "green city" because we are blessed with an incredible amount of green space and waterways, but we have no vision about how we could provide plenty of new jobs if we moved toward sustainability.

Time to go and appreciate the morning's new snow.

Photo: A New Leaf from Blog with a View.