I’ve started to think that the world divides into three kinds of people: 1) bloggers, 2) those who blog and 3) those who don’t. Bloggers are good at this, do it regularly and often have interesting observations and reports. Those who blog are part of the self-publishing-enabled mass who blog because they can. Their blogs often aren’t as interesting as those of the bloggers. And then there was my group. Those who don’t blog.
Blogging is difficult work that needs to be done regularly. That’s why I haven’t done it. But circumstances have forced me to enter the group of those who blog. I’ve received a great opportunity to spend a month at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa, to work with the journalism faculty there, to teach some classes and to do some consulting.
Everyone here says, and I’m sure they’re right, that this will be a life-changing experience. Consequently, I feel a responsibility to blog about what I observe and what I hope I learn in a part of the world I know nothing about.
I’ve already had the pains of crack withdrawal when I learned yesterday that the apartment I’ll be staying in for a month has no Internet connection. Eventually, I thought, well, I could read books or go to cafes and talk to people. This might be good for me.
And it’s not as if I’ll have no Internet connection for a month. All day on campus I’ll be connected. So maybe what I need to do in the evening is get a life … or at least a hobby.
Gary Kebbel's Travel Blog 
Go, Gary! I started blogging in earnest while I was in Malaysia. It seemed the best way to let all the interested people back home know how I was doing. (It’s also a great way to share your photos. Get a Flickr account if you don’t already have one.)
When I came back, I pretty much quit blogging. But I required my students to blog all that semester, fall 2005.
After that, I was convinced that if you have information to share, and it has some value, then you really should blog.
I made a commitment to myself to try to blog once a day, Monday through Friday. Of course, I skipped sometimes. But having that commitment in my mind helped keep me thinking of the blog as a real obligation, not just an “if I feel like it” thing.
Yeah, Mindy, it looks as if we came to blogging the same way — the desire not to write a bunch of e-mails about trip adventures. (I’m going to use Picasa for my travel photo albums because I like the display better than Flickr.)
Please do keep up the blog. Write, write, write whenever you can. This is exciting and you need to share all the experiences.
Have a great trip.
No home Internet connection? No home Internet connection for an entire month?? Cripes. I was talking with a friend at a party last weekend and we agreed that we could easily throw out our TV sets, but going without the Web for even a day or two would about kill us.
I’m so glad you’re blogging this experience. Looking forward to reading all about it.
This is exactly the reason why I am blogging about my PiA adventures! I sent mass e-mails while I was abroad in London, but this seems like a better way to spread the news. And my friend got me a Flickr Pro account as a going-away present! I know what you mean about the crack addiction to the Internet. When I was in Japan this past weekend, I had no access, except for the one hour I spent in an Internet cafe to look up sightseeing destinations. To make matters worse, the Japanese keyboard was a little funky, so I had no idea where the apostrophe or @ keys were!