Blogs As Creative Outlets

There are many entertaining workplace blogs. Many of these give disgruntled workers a place to vent and to exercise their creative writing talents. Others offer a fascinating insight into:

• the dilemmas that face GPs in today's NHS (the excellent NHS Blog Doc)
• days in the life of an EMT with the London Ambulance Service
• a remarkable account of a Traffic Warden and how his intervention probably saved a motorist's life
.

Blogging is a new creative outlet for many people. There are blogs that detail life in diverse families. And blogs that provide remarkable accounts of what it is like to live with a terminal illness or a disabling condition. There are audio blogs and video blogs of such remarkable quality that they amount to personal mini-documentaries.

I know a number of people who have learned a lot about their lives from blogging about it. It is like adopting a different perspective and considering aspects of your life that may typically go unconsidered.

Depending on the age-group (and the available resources), imagining that you were going to contribute some written, audio or video blogs entries about your life, is one of the exercises that I use in Happystance workshops. I was recently working with some young carers. Some of the participants were reluctant to join in some of the laughercises. They seemed to be very grave, and quite anxious children: some the self-reports indicated that they were experiencing distressingly little happiness in their lives. However, when I introduced this exercise, the difference in some of the children was remarkable. They enjoyed being the presenter of a mini-documentary about themselves. They came up with a host of ideas about items that interest them.