Blogs, Posts, Essays, Articles: and What I Write

Among many other things, I am a fan of Foglio Studio’s “Girl Genius” ongoing comic book series. I’d have their books, if the household budget allowed such spending, and that’s another topic.

The point is that I found this question in their blog today:

“Ughhhh I forgot I had this“
Kaja, Girl Genius Backstage (September 16, 2023)

“…Do people even still use blogs?…”

I’ve gathered that the heyday of blogging is long since passed, but I don’t know the answer, or answers. “Long since” by American standards, that is, and I’m drifting off-topic again.

I do know that I’m still posting something new here on A Catholic Citizen in America each Saturday.

Although sometimes keeping that schedule was a tad challenging.

Whether or not that’s “blogging” depends, like so much else, on what the word’s taken to mean.

I think of A Catholic Citizen in America as a blog, and my ‘Saturday’ posts as blog posts: largely because the (free) service I used back in 2008, when I started, had those labels. The service was Blogger.com, the first A Catholic Citizen in America post went online September 16, 2008: and I’m drifting again.

If my default labels for the stuff I write are widely meaningful, then I’m a blogger and what I do each week is blogging.

On the other hand, if I shift mental gears and look at how I see my content and what I do while preparing it: I’m writing essays, monographs, or articles. “Monograph” sounds a trifle highfalutin, “essay” reminds me of my college days, but all three labels strike me as accurate.

I’d prefer “article”, since I try to make these things fun to read.

Maybe “fun” isn’t the right word. Let’s say worth the time it takes to read them.

And now I’d better get back to this week’s “article”. It’s about what scientists found in the Trapezium Cluster, and why other scientists deliberately dropped a few thousand atoms of antimatter.