Recognizing the Cycles of Blogging

by Narelle Hanratty
My blog — and me have been a-sailing on the internet seas with WordPress for almost 5 years now. There’s so much I’ve learnt and want to share with others. Two things straight up: (1) context is decisive: ie, being a blogger is not the same as being a writer; (2) there are cycles to being a blogger, and knowing that up-front makes a difference.

Narelle Hanratty

Management consultant by day, blogger by morning, noon and night, Narelle runs the blog, Solid gold creativity. In 2008, feeling something was missing from her life, Narelle’s eye fell on a reply given by Clare Bowditch when an Age journalist asked what she believed in.

I believe in the solid gold power of creativity in everyday life.

So the blog was born, and its purpose was to “pay attention to aspects of everyday life that are creative, and in such paying attention, to be creative.”
In the five years since, this purpose has been fulfilled many times over. Along the way, the blog has morphed and expanded, found itself in cul-de-sacs and discovered the surprising subjects that excite readers.

These days, Narelle writes about the application of philosophy to everyday life by telling the stories of people she meets and her own stories. The power of story is immense, she says. It instructs, expands, transforms, all under its own steam.

Narelle has degrees in the philosophy of technology and psychology, and believes philosophy wipes the floor with psychology in usefulness. She also knows a lot about the cycles of blogging, having experienced all of them and invented others. In 2010, she was published in the first Australian anthology of blog writing called Miscellaneous Voices, published by Miscellaneous Press, with a post involving Bill Clinton and a bedazzled literary professor.

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