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Cooking Up A New Social Blog - For Loners

As the Blogger deadline for cutting off FTP access for blogs like mine nears, I've started looking into alternative platforms for Self Publishing 2.0. But my new blog is more than a test for the WordPress software, it's also an attempt to use blogging as it's intended, as a social networking tool rather than as a content management tool. You can check it out at (I initially gave the wrong link when I posted:-)


From the technical standpoint, it's the first time I've offered e-mail subscription to a blog, (though you don't get the pictures that way), and included a Blogroll. More on that in a minute. I even created a custom graphic for the look:



The problem came with the subject. What do I know enough about that I can write something every day without putting myself to sleep? I concluded that the one subject I should really be able to hit out of the park is going through life alone. I realized I might have a different take on the subject when it came up in conversation a while back that I don't have a table for eating. I've been eating off my lap for the last dozen years because there's nobody to tell me not to.

I've written a handful of posts over the past week while learning the WordPress software, but I haven't hit my stride on the tone yet. It won't be a glorification of living alone which I see as a second class existence at best. I'm more interested in the cooking tricks and time trials of living alone, never having somebody to call to come pick you up. I'll also write about being in business alone, which has upsides and downsides and probably a wider audience. So my clear vision for the blog is a place for people to be alone ...... together. Huh?

Which brings us back to the problem of the Blogroll. There are plenty of blogs about business and finance that I can include, most are essentially giving advice to individuals, but I couldn't find a single blog about living alone that wasn't the result of a death or divorce. I'm interested adding blogs by people who are living alone because like me, that's all they know. I don't understand why I haven't found any yet, could they all be ashamed?

Let me know if you have any Blogroll candidates for me, I'm still looking.

10 comments:

James Bressi said...

Nothing ever seems original, but I think you have originality. What I like most is that it doesn't seem you are going to fill it with melancholy--which most associate with "alone"--and that makes me want to read more.

Best wishes and luck.

Morris Rosenthal said...

James,

I don't think anybody would want to read a sad-sack blog. I'm not sure anybody would want to read an upbeat loner blog either, but I'm in it for the learning experience.

Gimmee them links:-)

morris

Anonymous said...

This link leads to a well written blog by a man in his 40's who, as far as I can tell, is determinedly single....he noted the tenth anniversary of his singledom in a list with ratings earlier this year. He writes mostly about the oddest and unlovely things to be found in and around London, UK. I understand he has several thousand followers! He's definitely not a sad-sack but then he doesn't activly say 'This is a blog by a single man, that can only be researched and written by a single man without a social life...' even if this is mostly true.

http://www.diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Oh, and in addition to my previous suggestion, I think I probably found this appropriately titled blog via a comments link:

http://www.onemanblogs.co.uk/index.php/about/ego

Not sure on his domestic arrangements though!

Morris Rosenthal said...

Anonymous,

Thanks for both, I will check them out. I'm not sure about the "determinedly single" angle, sounds more like a misanthrope, or misogynist, which is about as far from my feeling as you can get. Might also disqualify him based on the ten years, which implies he hasn't always lived alone. I'm really interested in people like myself who have never tried being half of a whole, not people who blew it.

Morris

Turpentine Jones said...

I've stayed single because after much research I've accepted that I share no common interests with women. I'm an artist and writer and thinker, drinker and stinker and women need calm and security- that's not misogyny, it's a combination of good old nature and nurture. I don't shop, eat out or travel. My projects= my life. If this was the fifties, I'd be on my fourth wife by now. You too, pal-

Morris Rosenthal said...

Tyrone,

Are you the Anonymous I was responding to? I don't have a clue where you are coming from. I was responding to the wording of Anonymous's post, "the tenth anniversary of singledom." If you walked a few decades in my shoes, you would also label anybody who thinks about it that way as a msiogynist - it's pretty much the definition.

No, I wouldn't be on my fourth wife in the fifties or any decade, what a misanthropic thing for you to say:-)

Morris

Anonymous said...

No, Tyrone is not the anon you responded to.

The writer of the first blog I referred to seems to have been 'once bitten' and is evidently not keen on trying again - or perhaps isn't keen on putting the effort in - or perhaps, as you so succinctly put it, is just a plain old misogynist. Dunno, in any case he writes nice posts that he puts an awful lot of effort into.

As for you, I do wonder whether there wouldn't be a nice Eurpoean Jewish lady somewhere to your liking? (Who would also like you). Culture does make a difference I beleive.

Anon Anon.

Morris Rosenthal said...

Anon Anon,

One of the things I like about the WordPress I'm using for the new blog is it allows editing of comments, and request an e-mail address from the commentor. My practice over the years on Self Publishing, when rejecting comments (and I' reject well over half) is to try to find the commentor and explain why. With the Anon's, it's hopeless.

Why European? There aren't really that many Jews kicking around the world these days, majority are in Israel and the US.

Morris

Anonymous said...

An inspired blog; the only real remedy/ next step in being a loner is to find another loner who craves jut a little company, now and then. My husband and I have been a couple of loners (and writers) for 13 years now and find our own company to be vastly sufficient.