Bloggers at Play

Play 

Verb: Engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose. 

Noun: Activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation.

Blogging is only playing, right? Well it is for me.

Sure, there are some bloggers who claim to make six figure incomes from blogging, and other bloggers who have those annoying Google AdSense ads on their blogs and who probably make 23 cents a year from them. They are not blogging purely for "enjoyment and recreation."

And there are other bloggers who are trying to push a political agenda or save the planet or whatever, so they are not playing because they have a "serious or practical purpose."

But my blog is not serious. It certainly serves no practical purpose. It is for enjoyment and recreation. Mainly my own enjoyment and recreation. If anyone else enjoys it, that's a bonus.

Blogging is playing.

Play can be unstructured or unstructured. Some times it's just fun to kick a ball around and see if you can do crazy things like kick it up in the air and then bounce it off your head. A lot of my blogging is like that. I just toss things up in the air and see how they land or if they bounce off someone else's head. But sometimes it's fun to have a bit of structured play. Invite some friends over. Throw some sweatshirts on the ground to make some goal posts and have an impromptu game of soccer (aka football in real English.)




Our occasional group writing projects are the structured play of our blogging. Someone chooses a topic and others write posts vaguely related to that topic. It's all for enjoyment and recreation. It's play.

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Last month, the topic of our group writing project was Top Sailing Destination on the Planet. We had fourteen entries in all.

There were two things that surprised me about the posts submitted. One was that many of the entries were from bloggers participating in one of our group writing projects for the first time. The other surprise was that most of the posts were actually about the writers' home waters rather than some exotic destination thousands of miles away.

Both surprises were good surprises.

Here are all the participants and their posts...



Five of the entrants chose locations in Europe...

The Knitting Sailor says in her post In which I am provincial that she chooses Kielder Water, a large reservoir in Northumberland in North East England, which is the home of her sailing club.

Captain JP says I want to sail in Scottish waters.

Kevin of Lost at Sea tells us Why West Cork is Better Than Just About Anywhere.

Peter of Blur wrote Summer Nights in Bohuslän which is about a double-handed race through the Bohuslän archipelago on the west coast of Sweden.

And the author of Reaching Broadly tells us in The Wine-dark Sea why his top sailing destination on the planet is in the Mediterranean, specifically the Dodecanese islands, the northern part of the Croatian coast and Turkey around Gocek.

Then there were five entrants who, like me, favor the eastern seaboard of North America....

Diabolo214 says his top destination is the New Meadows River off Casco Bay in Maine, his home sailing waters. It sounds delightful, especially the chance to sail over to Cundys Harbor for a Lobster Roll.

Bridget of VILLAGEHOMESTEAD also lives in Maine and wrote about Penobscot Bay: Little Bit of Heaven on Earth.

Baydog of 829 southdrive is a native of New Jersey and contributed a wonderfully nostalgic post about his summers as a kid on the Jersey Shore, the place he calls his Comfort Zone.

A little further south, Mitch of Bone in its Teeth says that the top sailing destination on the planet is the Chesapeake Bay and the surrounding coastal waters of Maryland and Virginia.

And Sam who writes about How to Sail the Laser tells us that Lasers Like Lake Eustis, his home lake in Florida. Apparently the lake is inhabited by alligators, but they do not eat small sailboats. Good to know.

We had three entrants who are from the center of the North American continent and who enjoy sailing on the fresh water lakes and rivers there...

My2fish says that Michigan is a great place to sail. It certainly looks like it is.

Dan and Michele of Follow the Horizon make a strong case that the best sailing destination is wherever your boat is floating right now, Familiar Waters, in their case the Illinois River

And Kevin of Sail Far Live Free writes about cruising Lake Huron's North Channel in Awakening from a Cruiser's Dream.

And then there was Chris...

Chris of Rowing for Pleasure wrote Rowing in the Rain which was actually about a number of destinations he dreams of rowing at such as the River Krath at Slavna; or on the Barb, the lake in the Upper City in Bekla; or up the Miskatonic River through Arkham. Fantastic!



Thanks to everyone who came out to play.