When Is A Blog Not A Blog?

It's on the Web, and it's a log in the sense that it's a journal, but it just doesn't seem right to call it a blog. It's been nearly two years since David Byrne launched his online journal, and at this point the differences are evident. It's the journal of a globetrotting anthropologist, and the diary of a philosopher; it also records the observations of an artist, a musician, and a photographer. Some days it's just a guy riding his bike around town, or having lunch somewhere—ordinary events in an extraordinary life.

But a life perhaps more grounded in the larger realities of the human race, and the knowledge that we're all connected in fundamental, inescapable ways. Isolation—or insulation—promotes stagnation; growth requires contact with reality in its various incarnations.

We need something to push against, some resistance and some reminders that we can’t just coast — some tests, surprises, practice, uncertainty and even unpleasantness to make us ask ourselves constantly who we are, what do we want, where are we going and do we really want to go there?

When taking inventory, it helps to ask the right questions. This journal contains enough interesting questions to keep me occupied for a while, and that's just scratching the surface of the celebration. So are epiphanies made.

 

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