Being a blogaholic…

While having dinner with my very good friend LF at Burgoo on Main, we had an interesting conversation, worth recalling here now. In the past few months, blogging has become a passion for me. So much that I think I’ve become a blogaholic.

I started reading blogs because my friends used them to keep me up to date on what was going on in my life. I started blogging first because my brother did it. I blog because I love writing. I still do like my academic work, and I am passionate about environmental issues, about research, and about teaching. However, I also love social media and the new word that has opened to me. From new friends to attending events to getting swag to simply being recognized (someone recognized me at the Car Free Festival on Main Street – “OH, so YOU are Hummingbird604! I do read your blog“). Quite endearing, really.

But the truth of the matter is that, beyond that, I may seem like a blogaholic but I have never done things any other way. If I am going to take something on, I do it to the fullest. When I learned to play volleyball, I became passionate about it and tried to get as good and competitive as possible. When I learned to dance, I immersed myself in the salsa culture and danced until my feet hurt. When my father said that I needed to find out what exactly made me happy I embarked in a test-drive of many different careers. That has been both my philosophy and my way of going about things. DO THINGS TO THE MAX.

I thought to myself…”well, if I am going to be in the social media , I am going to learn how to do my own HTML tags. I want to be able to modify my own CSS. I want to learn how to increase my Google Page Rank, understand SEO, and more than anything, be able to use social media and the technology to bridge the chasm between audience and data source… As a researcher, I want to be able to understand the why. As a blogger interested in social media, I want to understand the the how.

I have found that when a topic touches an issue that I am interested in, I research and read about it obsessively. The Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerberg interview fiasco. The Emily Gould – Gawker blogging debacle. The whole issue with AP and charging for quotations. Bill C-61 and the lack of transparency of governmental policy decisions. The list goes on, and on, and on. It’s almost 2 AM on a Saturday night (when normal people are either asleep or getting home from the bar) and I am at my office working, and blogging.

So the questions that are currently on my mind are … what is it that drives people to be workaholics (or blogaholics – or in my case, both)? What drives your inner competitive spirit? And what kind of trade-offs do we need to take into account before we dive in head on? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

[UPDATE - Having published the post, I almost forgot to mention that my friends Ianiv and Arieanna own the Blogaholics.ca domain - go check it out!]

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