Blogs (or web logs), have become an important part of our culture in the last few years. Almost everyone writes one and/or reads several, and blogs sometimes actually make money with advertising and referrals. Some bloggers, like the young and quite tatooed Emily Gould, have even parlayed personal blogging into high powered jobs. In her article, Exposed, in The New York Times Magazine, (May 25, 2008), Emily recounts her leap to fame, profit and celebrity-dom via her blogs, and the resultant exposure of her personal life.
Tina posed the eternal question, Why do you blog? She wrote: I keep this blog so that I can have an outlet to write and so that I can share my experiences with friends and family (and you!) as I learn about life down south…
Elizabeth responded for all of us tango-bloggers when she said,
The blog evolved along with the dance journey, and when I began to get comments, it lead to some real in-person friendships, to Buenos Aires, to a great group of dancer companions.
As for me, it was an accident. A friend asked me to write some posts as a guest blogger on his tango blog, I clicked the wrong button, and Lo! I was a Blogger! The first six months I only posted occasionally, but when I fell and broke two ribs and was then housebound, writing for my blog gave me a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and after two months of almost daily self-expression on the internet, I was hooked.
Emily Gould wrote of her experiences with blogging: I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there's a place where a record of their existence is kept -- a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you.
Blogging is natural for expats (God, how I hate that word!) We are far, far from home and it's a way for us to feel connected. I am grateful every day for the internet, and for the faithful readers and commentators of this blog. Yes, like Elizabeth, I've connected with some wonderful real-life people who have become my friends. Some were already here, living like me in Buenos Aires, and some come here on occasion to the Mecca of tango from around the world and often we personally meet to continue our friendship begun in cyberspace. And I have to admit, the "record of my existence" aspect is kind of a part of my blogging too. While tangocherie is not the Great American Memoir, still it's nice to share some things I've learned on my tango-loss-cancer-love Life Journey.
Emily wrote for a lot of us when she said, The will to blog is a complicated thing, somewhere between inspiration and compulsion. It can feel almost like a biological impulse. You see something, or an idea occurs to you, and you have to share it with the Internet as soon as possible.
Hmm, biological impulse...sounds a bit like tango!
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