I believe blogs can be a means to an end. I know bloggers who've made TV appearances because of their blogs, bloggers who have landed good jobs in marketing, and others who used their blogs to get book deals. Which is great. But on the other end of the blogging equation, there are many bloggers who are interested in nothing more than writing for the sake of writing, using their blogs as journals, memoirs, and living testaments to their struggles and their love of their children. Many bloggers search for a balance between the two approaches.
No one I know has been more of an advocate for the idea of writing for the sake of writing than Bill Peebles from the blog ihopeiwinatoaster. In our dad bloggers group, Bill is often the voice of "old-school" blogging--he's the one who reads most of our posts, the one who compliments the rest of us the most when we write honestly, and the one most likely to complain when he feels blogging has moved away from being a platform for introverts who use blogs to express themselves in a way they can't do in "real life," to a tool cynically used by marketers and by those looking to make a quick buck on the Internet.
Bill doesn't only talk the talk. His blog exemplifies the way blogging used to be, and the way it is if we can find it. Without a fancy template, without a domain name and a hosting plan, Bill's blog manages to make you pause, think, and reflect. There are stories about his kids (never with the half-loving-half-making-fun-of-their-naive-innocence style the rest of us use when we write about our own children), videos of songs he writes for his kids (like the video at the bottom of this post), and stories about his own struggles with a world that can often make very little sense.
It's a great blog that deserves many more readers, if only to show that you don't need a template, a domain, a marketing plan, and a Klout account. All you need is your voice and your honesty.
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