It has been a long while since I considered myself a blogger. So long in fact that even the claim to being a ‘sometimes blogger’ has started to wear thin. So, forgive me if I am a little rusty. A lot has happened in the time between my regular blogging and now. To name a few big changes: I got married, co-founded an ICT4D social enterprise and more recently I have returned to study.
These changes undoubtedly affect a person’s perception and opinions and one’s articulation of the same. And to add to this, I firmly believe that being a blogger is not just defined by what you write but by your interaction with other blogs and bloggers. To be a true blogger, one, I believe, has to be both a reader of and a writer of blogs. And boy hasn’t blogging come a long way since those early days?
As I read through old posts, they sound slightly different and I question if that voice, way back in 2005 was “really me†and as I began to formulate new posts I was conscious that perhaps my new posts which reflect the changes I have been through, when read alongside my old posts may not sound “like meâ€. I also thought about the changing blogsphere in particular the Kenyan blogsphere and wondered if I my voice would fit in to this new place.
Then I was reminded of an article by Professor Angela P. Harris on race and gender essentialism that I read as an undergraduate; an article which is, for good reason, one of the most cited law review articles of all time.  Harris challenges the idea that individuals speak with one unified voice; instead she suggests, that we all speak with a “welter of partial, sometimes contradictory, or even antithetical†voices. She refers to this as “multiple consciousness†and states that this consciousness is not a “final outcome…but a processâ€. So as I begin my return to blogging I am comforted by the fact that all my posts, both old and new are still a reflection of who I am; an insight into my  “multiple consciousnessâ€. My blog is “home to both the first and the second voices, and all the voices in between.â€
So this is it…a brief sound check …as I get ready for my return to blogging…
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Image Source:Â p_a_h via Flickr – reproduced under Creative Commons license
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jke says
*As I read through old posts, they sound slightly different and I question if that voice, way back in 2005 was “really meâ€*  — this is exactly why we did this in the first place. I am also surprised at the stuff I used to write and how it has changed over the years. I think my blogging mojo is in inverse proportion to the pile of unread articles in Pocket (readitlater).
Welcome back!
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MamaJunkYard says
Asante, JKE. I guess it comes with growing up (growing old?) – we just had the opportunity to document our changes online