Bloggers, like writers of all sorts throughout history, are constantly asking themselves why they do it. While I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s something unique to writers, writers do tend to attach (angst-ridden?) debates about purpose and meaning to their writing lives in ways that, say, doctors or chemists or engineers, typically do not. And at some point in nearly every debate about the whys of writing, money comes up — usually in some negative context, as if writerly professions are the only ones where economics should somehow be kept at bay.

Before this morning, I had never heard of Payperpost. I didn’t start this site with the intention of making money, and have so far not invested the time necessary to figure out what options I might have for actually generating some supplementary income. Granted, I have the Amazon associates links here and there, but I included them mainly because I love Amazon and wanted to experiment with something easy and small just to see what was involved. I’m typically not bothered by advertising on blogs or web sites, as long as it’s not intrusive (like popups or graphic overlays) and doesn’t distract from my ability to focus on the writing or imagery on the site. And, admittedly, I don’t understand the business model behind blog ads and have never actually followed the links to something being advertised — so don’t I really get the economics behind it either.

In any case, I followed this series of posts this morning, starting with Honoring the Hard Working Blue Collar Bloggers by Lorelle. Lorelle links to a discussion of Payperpost at Deep Jive Interests. A notable and praiseworthy element of both posts is their recognition of the folks they’re calling “blue-collar bloggers” — which I take to be everyone but those who think they know better than the rest of us what this medium should be used for. In other words, most of us. See also the precise characterization of the underlying intellectual issues on Seth Finklestein’s Infothought. Seth makes some very good points.

One of the things I like about the whole idea of blogging is the very democratic nature of it. While I think the large volume of writing out there may demand new skills at finding and absorbing information that matters to us, that simply means we need to develop those skills — ones which for each individual can mean learning more about what’s really important to them. In that sense, the democracy that blogging offers works in multiple directions to potentially make us all better writers and better readers. That people can get paid for that, in whatever form, simply means that we’re attaching economic value to that process and its potential. The economics of an activity are not evidence of its perniciousness; they just represent one piece of the activity’s cultural significance that we need to consider in our discussions.

I could probably spend the whole day spinning out various related themes from these posts and the ones that inspired them (which I’ve only glanced at so far), so more on that another time. Those original posts could use a highly critical eye. I’ll close by saying I’m typically very suspicious of anything that sounds like elitism or is written from an obvious embrace of cultural stratification. That’s not to say that cultures, all cultures, are not layered in one way or another; but is to make the point that blogging’s very nature as a wide-open, available-to-anyone medium has the potential to tilt windmills away from the elitist tendencies in any culture, toward something more inclusive that engages us with each other as individual human beings instead of stereotypes.

The 2007 Early Spring Buds Collection is now available for your viewing pleasure. Taking snaps like these has become one of my annual rituals. Even though they’re not especially beautiful in the traditional sense, they do mark the end of the Dark Ages as move from winter into spring.

Preparing the Collection gave me a chance to play around with some camera settings and lenses while taking close-up and macro shots. Experimenting with the A100 DSLR is a blast; it’s great to return to photography the way I remember it from my fledgling 35mm photographer days. Zooms and closeups, especially, are real treats. And essentially no-cost experimentation is an added bonus.

Additional collections you can look forward to:

The 2007 Middle Spring Buds Collection
The 2007 High Spring Buds Collection
The 2007 Renaissance (Early Summer) Plants and Flowers Collection
The 2007 Modern Period Plants-Gone-Wild Collection

And all this goes in on my back yard!

By late summer and early fall — when everything needs excessive attention and dies anyway — I’m usually over it. So no need to expect a Post-Modern Period Collection; there probably won’t be one….