“Thesis word cloud” flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

I used to write here regularly, and at some point I stopped. Maybe it was the pandemic, maybe it was the pressure of writing up my PhD, maybe it was a lack of inspiration. Recently I have been posting a #SilentSunday image here every weekend, but somewhere along the way I stopped using this as a place to write. I don’t know why, but I know that lately I’ve been realising how much I miss it. So the session ‘Blog or Die’ at the DS106RadioSummerCamp was just what I needed to get my motivation back. I won’t summarise it here – you can listen to it yourself or read the transcript, but it got me thinking about why I blog – and how difficult I was finding it to get back into the habit after a while away. And when I thought about why I blogged, I remembered about discovering Lauren Richardson, and writing about it in my thesis:

As I struggled to find my voice and articulate my thoughts, a friend from my community suggested that I look at Laurel Richardson’s writings, and sent me some suggestions. I had no time to read, no time to change my methodology, no time to reframe this research – I felt under pressure to have this thesis submitted so that I could take back my evenings and weekends and relax. Yet, as I read her words, I knew that I had found the approach that I needed. Richardson suggests that writing can itself be a method of enquiry: that as well as telling you what I think, I can write to find out for myself what I think:

“Writing is also a way of “knowing” – a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. Form and content are inseparable”(Richardson, 2000, p.923).

So, that’s it in a nutshell — that’s why I blog, and why I have missed the practice of regular blogging. I write not to tell others what I think, but to find out for myself what I think. And if others read what I write and respond, then that’s a bonus.

Richardson, L. (2000) ‘Writing: A method of inquiry’, in Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S. (eds) Handbook of qualitative research. 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.