When is a Blog Not a Blog?

I must confess: I hate the word blog.

I’m a word lover, a storyteller, a lexophile. I love to feel the texture of words, rolling them in my thoughts and over my tongue. I love to see the shapes they make on printed pages or in my own looped handwriting. There are words I say purely for the enjoyment of it: ethereal, scintillating, phantasmagorical.

I do not love the word blog.

It is a contraction of “web log”, coined in the early days of the internet. Knowing that doesn’t help me.

In my thoughts, on my tongue, blog feels heavy. Leaden. Uninspiring.

Even bog is a better word. It brings to mind peat-stained waters hiding ancient offerings, and long-legged birds stalking silvery fish, stabbing with their spear-like beaks among reeds and bulrushes. Frog song and insect hums. Phantom lights and ghost lanterns.

I cannot bear blog.

And so, while strictly speaking this is a blog, I have searched for another name for it. I’ve chosen journal, which does not trouble my poet’s sensibilities. I keep a hand written journal, paper smudged with ink and the occasional tea-spill.

This is my online journal, and here I will share with you my thoughts on books, witchcraft and writing. Perhaps I will even tell you more words that fill my heart, and others that leave a muddy taste in my mouth.

Do you experience words this way? Are there some words that thrill you to say? Or are there those that you just cannot enjoy at all?