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Old 24-04-2008, 18:22   #1
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The Psychology of Cruising Blogs?

Being fairly new to “internet cruising” and just discovering the modern day cruising fraternity as a liveaboard, I am amazed at the number of Cruising Blogs that are out there.

I have to admit that my initial reaction was kind of negative as I am a private person, not particularly trusting of strangers and could not see the value of putting such personal thoughts and photos out there for any weirdo to see. Then I realised that this is what I sort of do on this forum, but usually to target a specific bit of information from a fellow cruiser.

So why do you blog?
Is it to share and normalise your experiences with family at home so as to keep them from worrying?

Is this a substitute for the academic stimulation you got at work, prior to retiring?

Is this some kind of legacy, showing that you did something different in life from the norm?

Is it an alter-ego trip, a creative way to monitor how you are feeling about your lifestyle?

Is it a way of giving the raspberry to all those family and friends who said you were crazy to do this?

Why do you go to all of that effort to publically put your life on display?
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Old 24-04-2008, 19:12   #2
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Pelagic,

Neither my husband nor I were diarists, journal-keepers, or bloggers before we left on our wee sailing trip 17 months ago. We began keeping a blog as a way to share our experiences and information about the places we visit with our friends and family back home. The knowledge that we are going to want a picture for an upcoming blog post makes us keep our camera handy. As a result, now we have a wonderful (to us) visual and textual documentation of our travels.

After about six months out cruising, I (the primary author of the blog posts) found another reason to post. In my former life I spent my days reading and writing complex documents. After a few months of cruising, I noticed that my grasp of grammar and punctuation rules was becoming slightly tenuous (possibly a side effect of too much rum). By posting on the blog every few days, I have to think about and apply those those rules. Several of my former co-workers read the blog, so I quickly hear about it if I slip up. Blogging helps to keep me sharp.

Somewhere along the line, our audience grew from friends and family to a wider group that includes several people who are planning their own cruises. So we began including details in posts that we think might be useful to other cruisers. It is a way to give back to the online cruising community, who answered our questions ad nauseam on bulletin boards like this one before we departed.

Best,

Danika
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Old 24-04-2008, 19:20   #3
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Free place to hang photos on the internet... and I've made 8 dollars from Google Adsense.

Plus, I always welcome a chance at butchering the english language.

(Mine is a refit blog, so don't get your hopes of pictures involving crystal blue waters up to high...)
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Old 24-04-2008, 19:56   #4
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Pelagic,


A very interesting question. My guess is that you will find as many reasons as there are people doing blogs/web pages.


I think we started doing our WEB page a long time ago. It sort of grew out of our editing a Newsletter for people who had boats like ours. Everyone was desperate for more information on doing projects and wanting to know what others were doing with their boats.


From there, once we set out, it was to keep friends and family informed of what we were doing and where. I also have to admit that a small part was to show some of the people I used to work with that you can retire before you hit 65+!


Before we started cruising our selfs, we LOVED to get and watch videos on cruises that others had done. Like “600 Days to Cocos Island” and “Blue Water Odyssey”. As it got closer to the time for us to go, we were finding that cruising videos were getting harder to find. No new ones were being created. We also could not find ANY on the Sea of Cortez. So, we decided (after we had been out for a year) that we would do one as sort of a “payback” for all of the ones we had seen. Also, sending a short video to family and friends was a lot easier than trying to send back hours of raw video.


AND, when we are old in a rocking chair, we can look back on our good times cruising.


Greg
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