Where are they now?
We’ve all been through it, go through it again and again–the decision whether to keep it up. We regret the decision made to leave by friends we’ve never met. We snicker, they’ll be back, because we know like nicotine and whiskey, blogging is addicting. We admire those who’ve left to spend the time they’ve recognized as wasted instead on real writing; the novel, the poem, the job. We’ve sighed at their much-cleaner houses now, as we look around our own. We miss their words, and yet, when seeing how our own are spent, most often misinterpreted, ignored except for some occasional recognition of a feeling or a thought, we wonder too if life is better on the path they’ve chosen. Life should be more private, I suppose.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I relate to the house comment. 😉
I think the biggest problem with blogging is the expectation of daily posts. In the early 90s when I was writing my on own personal website, that pressure to write did not exist; I wrote when I wanted to write. Nowadays I do the same with my blog and find it extremely beneficial to ignore that time-sensitive posting rule.
It’s a problem of scope, in some ways. There are so many blogs out there, more all the time. It’s difficult for me to limit myself to a set of blogs to read and comment on. I keep stretching beyond the limits of what I have time for. Then there’s the feeling of responsibility to post, and of how others receive what you say when you reach deep inside yourself—or just whine about surface issues.
To focus on one thing, to reveal something personal, to chat as if with neighbors, or go deep. Decisions, decisions. When to post? How often? There’s a lot more to blogging than just posting a few words every day or every few days. This past fall I got so involved in my fiction I didn’t raise my head into the blogosphere for weeks. It felt good, but then I returned and hadn’t commented anywhere or posted, and it was like arriving at the party when everyone else is on their way home. I had to catch up.
“Where are they now”?
Well lately it seems as if they are all writing books on their blogging experience.
I think that pressure is a part of it, just as is the addiction to those of us who can’t find the OFF switch.
And Steve, though I wouldn’t think of publishing the blog as a book form (and there are services that will do that for you), I have taken out several of the categories and published them in a binder book format when they were relative to a course I was taking, such as Creative Writing – Fiction (Learning to Spin), or New Media. The weblogs served then as journals/papers/portfolios. I’m also tempted now, as I make a firmer commitment to stay totally away from personal entries, to pull those out and make them into a book for myself and maybe a few family members and friends.