This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Julia Moulden. Julia is a regular contributor to the world’s #1 blog, the Huffington Post. Her new book, WE ARE THE NEW RADICALS: A Manifesto for Reinventing Yourself and Saving the World, will be published internationally by McGraw-Hill, New York in January 2008
By Julia Moulden
Blogging is like life: it takes on the meaning you give it.
At first, blogging was an act of faith. Long before I had a publisher, I had a blog. From this tiny cyberplatform, I sent forth word about a movement I saw taking shape — that people were longing to do good works. My earliest posts felt like calls into a virtual Grand Canyon, and I listened intently for the first faint echoes.
People like Drew McManus read my blog and made contact. Drew is co-founder of Bring Light, an innovative new website where people can find causes they care about, dialogue with charities and the community, and collaborate to fund a specific project (and, yes, they have a blog). Drew shared many wonderful stories with me, including how, when they were deep in the R&D phase, he came across a young woman’s MySpace page. She was talking to her friends, telling them that her rent had just been lowered by $40 a month, and that she wanted to give that money to charity. She asked if anyone had any suggestions of good causes she might consider. Drew remembers taking a sharp breath in and thinking, “Wow, when I was her age, that extra forty bucks would have gone to beer.”
Fifteen months later, blogging no longer feels like whispering shyly into the void. It has become a way to meet men and women I would otherwise never have encountered, and learn about their lives. Most importantly, it is a way to begin — and nurture — conversations with these people so that we can find ways to work together (like the MySpace woman and her friends) to make an even greater difference.
The need to tell and hear stories is as old as civilization. I now understand that a blog is simply a new tool.
3 Comments
Halalujah! I love this post. It speaks to the visceral part of me which believes that what we’re doing with blogging is: Storytelling to Make Change.
Whatever that change might be (for good or for worse— but we have that choice to decide).
Blogging is like life: it takes on the meaning you give it. And, for me, the meanings are immensely complex, but I love the connections I make with people, the communities that are built, the impact we can make as a collective whole.
I applaud this One Post Challenge (writ large), as I think it’s created some kind of “experience” of people who are inspired to talk together, fight a bit, debate, and challenge– quite literally– the assumptions that need to be challenged.
Brava! Bravo!
I agree Samantha. Blogging is about storytelling. Not the kind of storytelling where the story is handed down and repeated generation to generation. But the living storytelling where a community takes up the story and lives it. And by living it transforms it each and every time it is told.
Only stories that are actually lived retain their relevance as time passes.
I’m glad that the OPC has been the kind of experience that you describe. I must say I had no idea what I might be starting. But I am proud of what the community has brought to the table. There are many stories here. All of them still unfolding and ready to be retold and remixed.
Julia:
Thanks for the post. I’m flattered you mentioned me and the story I shared with you. This young woman was among the many inspirations that drove Melissa and I to create Bring Light.
Thanks to countless stories like hers, Bring Light is flourishing. Leaving my corporate job to this has been fun, terrifying, energizing, and exhausting. But it has always felt good.
I’m looking forward to your book’s release!
Drew
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Drew McManus
President & Co-founder
Bring Light
http://www.bringlight.com