Boggled Over Blogs

Who wrote the phrase "No man is an island"? 1. John Donne 2. John Milton 3. John F. Kennedy 4. Jon Bon Jovi

I never thought Jon Bon Jovi could write something like that. But I’ve remained skeptical about it since About A Boy made that pop quiz more than a year ago. My mother, who’s in her 40s, likes to say that phrase often so I reckon John Donne or John Milton must have written that sometime in the 1600s. And besides, it sounds old – that is, until I became an island myself.

I agree with the narrator in the movie: This is an island age. With the right furniture, a cable TV, Sony Playstation, DVD player, microwave oven, and a PC with at least three gigs on it, you can be your own paradise. You can just shut the door when you get home from working nine-to-five in a cubicle, flick on some switches and you’re in bliss, unmindful of the waves thrashing outside. You don’t need close proximity with others. After all, close contact can sprout insurmountable mountains in between. So why try?

But you can still interact with other people, of course. We, island people, have the PC and the Internet to thank for that. There’s the e-mail, there are chatrooms and applications like Yahoo Messenger, and now, there are blogs. Blogs – or Web logs – are sort of online journals. Unlike personal webpages – which tend to look like slumbooks encoded in html – blogs are usually about musings of other islands on the Internet ocean (a review of a popular blog site revealed that most entries start with "I am alone"). But online diarists tell me that the best thing about blogs is it’s interactive – people can add their own thoughts to your journal.

At first, I viewed blogging as grand posturings by pseudo Anais Nins in the world. I’ve always believed in keeping your most profound thoughts to yourself. Posting them online is like sharing your rubies and diamonds with strangers. However, as a diary-keeper myself, there are some epiphanies that simply seep out from the most guarded of pages. They suddenly escape through our mouths whenever a friend seeks solace or an advice regarding a recent heartbreak. Thus, I’ve decided to start a blog – a loser’s blog – for the comic relief of islands under the weather out there.

Two sites came heavily recommended: blogger.com (or blogspot.com) and blurty.com. Blogger boasts of its ease of use – "push-button publishing for the people," the slogan at the site’s front page says. Blurty, on the other hand, has few bold letters in front – it just invites you to start your own blog. Blogger has a list of recently published blogs and noteworthy journals on the left pane, while Blurty enumerates recent entries, most active blogs and recently created journals. Peeping at these entries is like leafing through the pages of your sister’s diary and finding out she just failed in math at school, but what’s more is you can virtually scrawl on the pages, "That’s karma!"

Setting up a blog account in Blogger.com is fairly easy: you just supply a first and last name, a valid e-mail address, a password, a title and summary of your blog, choose a template design (or pick your own if you’re knowledgeable enough), fix time zone settings, click finish and the blogger editing screen appears. You’re now free to create new posts, find and edit old entries, and publish your blog. Click on the settings tab at the top of the blank window to change your preferences.

Blurty.com, however, offers more than just entries. It allows you to post a picture (which I don’t think I would be doing), write a short user summary as well as some info on the things you like to do on your off-time. You can also choose templates and other settings. But unlike Blogger, Blurty users have to download a Windows client that lets you write entries even if you’re offline or if you don’t have Explorer running yet. But if you’re on vacation, you can create new entries through the site’s update page.

Starting a blog is like drafting a Constitution for your newly found island independence. I could start off with a dumpee’s Bill of Rights or enumerate how long relationship tenures should be (aspirants need not be Philippine residents). But instead, I go with the flow: I start with my own "I am alone" intro.

"I’ve been an island for so long," I write on Blurty’s update screen. "I want someone to swim my shores, climb my trees, build grand sandcastles in my head and destroy them at a whim – just tell me I’m not alone."

Some say islands float closer or farther from one another an inch or two every year. I just hope someone catches my drift.