On your visit to Akinblog Hall

A journal of intent

There are very few people who are regular visitors to my blog and so readers of what I have been writing for 17 years. It is, however, important to state or maybe restate the purpose of my blog. It is a journal, not necessarily in the traditional sense of a leather-bound or a spiral-bound book with illegible handwriting.

I would not even pride myself into thinking some of what I write is even intelligible, I have simply put a somewhat personal diary in a public space. It is now the best record until a book is written of many aspects of my life, recollections, memories, expectations, plans, ideas, opinions, and much else. I hope it is kept alive by my survivors in some way or form.

Welcome to Akinblog Hall

One could even suggest a good deal is extemporaneous and developed in the process of writing. When I first thought of writing this blog, I imagined a palatial estate with expansive grounds, a large gate that opens unto a meandering drive that feasts the eyes with nature and the manmade, before you arrive at a big house or a small hut, as you are either overwhelmed or underwhelmed at what is before you.

The house is built to my specifications and taste, decorated for my comfort and situated to provide the best views of my entire. Visitors are attended to with the best hospitality can offer, a white-glove service, if you may. The hope is that guests have a memorable experience.

If occasion warrants it there will be a time to capture a visit in posterity, a picture in a frame to hang in the great hall and one you can take away as a keepsake. My house is also my home, in it I have the freedom to be myself without hindrance or prohibition.

Always guests, never prisoners

What I am saying is this, my blog will cover so many things including conversations I have had with people along with the crazy thoughts that are formed in the analysis of people, events, places, or things. Obviously, I will disguise personalities and sometimes find the form of words to address very personal issues, so they cannot be attributed to anyone in particular, when it can apply to everyone in general.

I apologise if you think anything I might have written is inadvertently about you, but if blogging is about how you see things and how you are affected by those things, it should be no surprise that this blog stays true to that concept. Returning to the idea of my blog as an estate, I receive guests and take no prisoners. Read it liberally, with an open mind, the way the words make sense to you might not be as intended, it is all without prejudice. Surely, I should not have to write an expository blog too.

Opinion: Resurrect your dead blogs

Dead blogs as Internet zombies

Sometimes I go checking on blogs I once read fervently and notice there has not been a newly written blog for years. It makes me wonder about when blogging seemed to be a trend and once the novelty wore off the interest in blogging died.

More so, I visit corporate and establishment websites with links to blogs that were enthusiastically written for a while and have had no recently new content. Now, apart from my personal blog that I have consistently contributed to for 15 years, I do have a professional blog that has had no new content for almost 5 years.

We all have stories to tell

The question then becomes, have we all run out of stories to write about? On a personal level, there is always an idea, an event, a circumstance or a personality engaging enough to write about along with having a perspective of things that can become a blog.

My view has always been, we are story people, we all have stories that can only be best told in our own voice, written in our own style and related uniquely from our own perspective. A blog is who you are, what you see, how you feel and the way you are affected or unaffected by that or other situations.

Blogging is easy, honestly

That means, there can be no reason not to have a blog in the first place and then keep it running as much as you could. There was a time when people religiously kept diaries and journals, captains of ships kept logs. The issue of documentation and record keeping is both for reference and posterity, removing dispute from ascertaining the facts as the reckoner has archived the situation.

Not that a blog is as formal as that. For where some have seen blogging as a means to a livelihood, mine is written out of interest, I have opinions and I write them down in a blog, I address social issues and those sometimes find resonance with other people, they begin and interaction that leads to a conversation.

Resurrect yourself in a blog

A blog does not have to be a serious endeavour of academic rigour, do your proofreading, do not dispense with the rules of grammar for the chosen language of communication and follow the common sense of a good seamstress making a skirt; make it short enough to keep the interest and long enough to cover the detail. I hope that analogy is relatable without appearing sexist.

As you read this, why did you stop blogging if you were once a blogger? The excuse that you haven’t the time for it would come across as lame; you can knock out a blog in less than 15 minutes and it does not have to be a treatise. Then the other question is, why are not blogging? That is, if you have never had a blog before, you cannot convincingly say you have no ideas, no opinions or no perspective of the things that surround your life.

There are too many blogging tombstones on the Internet on which we have written; Here lies the exhausted ideas of a person who once regaled us with stories that many once came here to read. Alas! You can resurrect your blog by posting one today.

In precis

A capture

Quite an eventful week it was as a visit to the bureaucracy where the fortnightly visit is not set for a weekly return in the month of December.

Then helping out in returning a malfunctioning phone posing as a better speaker of English for a relation who needed to exchange the phone lest the shop became uncooperative.

We were successful to getting the exchange and a better deal that everyone was regaled with tales of my supposed performance.

Then for the next three days, I had interviews scheduled, the first that was difficult with the last two that went really well but one now has to wait for a response, hopefully not for too long and a favourable one too.

Not much of a blog but a journal for the record.

Thought Picnic: The onion of truths

The anatomy of onions

It is all there in the blog he always tells friends and the other day a friend hinted that the information there is probably much clearer than interactive issues on the matters on which he opines conversationally, personal or peripheral.

Like onions, one peels into the structure to the core, the story and essence is all contained in this awkward journal that is already in its seventh year.

More of that self is revealed in what has lately been an avalanche of full disclosure and as the tide runs out some swimmers are suddenly going to be running for cover with the revelation that they had been swimming naked.

Peeling into the truth

It does not matter anymore because it would be learnt and there can only be great sympathy for those who cannot handle that truth.

The truth is more like an onion too, on the surface it has a skin and as it is peeled away you get to the detail, cut it for use and your eyes begin to water – irritation, sadness, joy or just plain emotion – leave the onion alone and the truth remains hidden; sometimes, it is best not to handle a truth that can be so volatile.

Knowledge is there and it is shared in a jumble or as a lucky-dip, someone always has something to take away, if you are not in the position of each of the 6 blind men’s perspective of the elephant, you do not yet have an elephant as a seeing man would know.

For those who had been allowed to know it was known that one might be fruitful in some other ways but never multiply in a particular way for years – the burden of concealing this fact exacerbates the desires of others to force the matter.

Deep in the onion

Every seeming palliative method has been deployed without much success but a continued and persistent pressure for adaptation and conformation clouds the focus that no one knows we are now at the core of the onion, the nuclear core is in view and the bitter truth explodes in the face of eyes ready to stream down with rivers of salt tasting waters – it cannot be done and let it no more depend on luck.

Talking of taste, the onion appears to do wonders to any dish, the dishes served in the blog are really the a la carte of a life being lived which might not have your best needs on the menu by which time it is safer to walk out of the restaurant before a bout of food poisoning becomes the lesson to trust instincts rather than tastes.

If there were to be a guidance certificate as a safety precaution to administering large doses of the truth or the usage of too many onions in the dish, it would be to never ask questions for answers you might not be ready for; before you get that far, if you must dice the onion, wear some goggles.