Don’t When There Isn’t
A good friend who reads my blog regularly—and wonders where the hell I’ve gone-- asks, “is there such a thing as blog fog?”
Yes, Barbara, you bet your sweet bippy there is, and I’m in the thick of it. The longer I remain engaged in this endeavor, the more unwilling I become to post about politics, culture, or general gossip—just for the sake of putting up a post. Yet this is what you need to do to keep your blog active and in the radar.
It’s a dilemma. If my blog gets too far below the radar, my motivation for blogging suffers. Nonetheless, I find myself subscribing to the same attitude—discipline, actually-- that Elaine expresses in her comment to my previous post: “I try to remind myself to blog when there's something I want to write about and don't when I don't.”
Unfortunately, for me, the “don’ts” are getting lengthier and more numerous. Elaine expresses amazement at how people with jobs and lives manage to squeeze in the blog time. Well, Elaine, most of them are a lot younger than you and I are.
Twenty-five years ago we could work a demanding job, be a mom or pop to our growing kids, maintain an active social life and handle an avocation or two. Back then, I could have dropped one of the avocations and plugged in blogging instead, had it existed.
No more. When my workload picks up, as it is now, there’s little mental or emotional juice left over for blogging. In this creative vacuum, I can think of nothing to write about except my political anger or the last movie I saw. Does anyone really care to read about how pissed off I am, or what my opinion was of the latest flick?
If you’re a professional pundit or critic, a scholar or serious student and practitioner of something, then your opinion is worth a read. If you’re not, then the blogging that matters is that which expresses—not your opinion—but your experience of living in the space that is uniquely yours. When you can adequately convey that experience to another, then it’s worth a post and a read. But it’s not something you can conjure up every day.
So I’m going to invoke Elaine’s discipline for myself—blog when there’s something to write about, and don’t when there isn’t.
A good friend who reads my blog regularly—and wonders where the hell I’ve gone-- asks, “is there such a thing as blog fog?”
Yes, Barbara, you bet your sweet bippy there is, and I’m in the thick of it. The longer I remain engaged in this endeavor, the more unwilling I become to post about politics, culture, or general gossip—just for the sake of putting up a post. Yet this is what you need to do to keep your blog active and in the radar.
It’s a dilemma. If my blog gets too far below the radar, my motivation for blogging suffers. Nonetheless, I find myself subscribing to the same attitude—discipline, actually-- that Elaine expresses in her comment to my previous post: “I try to remind myself to blog when there's something I want to write about and don't when I don't.”
Unfortunately, for me, the “don’ts” are getting lengthier and more numerous. Elaine expresses amazement at how people with jobs and lives manage to squeeze in the blog time. Well, Elaine, most of them are a lot younger than you and I are.
Twenty-five years ago we could work a demanding job, be a mom or pop to our growing kids, maintain an active social life and handle an avocation or two. Back then, I could have dropped one of the avocations and plugged in blogging instead, had it existed.
No more. When my workload picks up, as it is now, there’s little mental or emotional juice left over for blogging. In this creative vacuum, I can think of nothing to write about except my political anger or the last movie I saw. Does anyone really care to read about how pissed off I am, or what my opinion was of the latest flick?
If you’re a professional pundit or critic, a scholar or serious student and practitioner of something, then your opinion is worth a read. If you’re not, then the blogging that matters is that which expresses—not your opinion—but your experience of living in the space that is uniquely yours. When you can adequately convey that experience to another, then it’s worth a post and a read. But it’s not something you can conjure up every day.
So I’m going to invoke Elaine’s discipline for myself—blog when there’s something to write about, and don’t when there isn’t.
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