My Blogosphere Is Shrinking
(Brian - I will test your words out on the MacSpeech Dictate coming up here, haven't had a chance yet but I want to know too).
A little before I started making the Christmas Train and posted nothing else besides that for weeks, I started a project outside and away from the internet (mostly, though I did some test runs on what I was writing elsewhere). Sometime last fall I got very serious about it and by December I pretty much was keeping most of what was developing to myself. In fact there were zero posts last October, for example. Odd for a motormouth like me.
The copious notes and fragments and snippets and dialogs and scenes were beginning to pile up and I attempted to work it all together (while still doing the Train when I couldn't stand the writing anymore). The overwhelming amount of notes I created for the story I was doing got so unwieldy that I got the speech-to-text thing I told you about last post and that is helping a ton, though I'm still having trouble tying up all the bits of scenes that don't seem to go together no matter what I do.
But anyway, the point is, somewhere along the way I stopped visiting a lot of blogs. I mean just cold - dead. The funny thing is that I don't think i was alone. Around this holiday season I noticed less and less participation at some of the blogs I checked in on from time to time. As if the blogosphere was taking a collective time out. Probably not a bad idea. But it was odd how it all seemed (to my perception anyway) to happen at the same time.
Coming back into the blogosphere after the holidays, picking up again as the fiction work got less intense (and there were days it took over completely) I have found that either my tastes have changed or the same energy that was out there isn't out there anymore. I'm down to reading 6 1/2 blogs. Don't ask how the 1/2 got there. Just trust me on that. My blogroll is sadly neglected, in that as I used it for my "feed reader" I've found I barely use it anymore except to go to the handful of places I still visit and participate in.
Don't take it personal ok? My head got in a new place this winter partly brought on by the train project and partly brought on by the intense, other-worldly thing that happens when I get into the fiction mode.
But I don't know... is the blogosphere shrinking in reality or is it just my impression because I'm distracted?
posted by RW @ 8:32 AM
24 Comments
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24 Comments:
Well, I guess it depends on your perspective. If you, and I mean anyone, keeps a static blogroll never updating it with new blogs, then yeah...It's gonna dwindle. Bloggers come and go in your life, much like certain friends or colleagues.
I've noticed some folks who blog a whole lot less than they used to or have stopped altogether. Then there are the ones who now blog more than they used to. For me, it all evens out. Mostly.
Serendipitously enough, today marks the return of a certain bloggy friend who shut down his blog around 5 months ago. I thought he was gone for good, but the cat came back. a
Strangely enough I've added Candy, Sybil and Faiqa in the last few months. Am I picking only good-looking women anymore? It seems that way but it's coincidence I swear!
You could have worse criteria for picking blogs to read!
I've blogged and read less lately, too. Many reasons. Mostly, I just don't feel compelled to write for its own sake these days...if I have something to say, I'll say it. Otherwise, not.
Also, I really don't enjoy pointless, drawn out arguments as much as I used to.
The crazy thing is from the very start most of my regulars have been guys.
Plus I've had good luck in discouraging nincompoops from coming back and wasting their energy here. Just lost another "follower" the other day - thank Gawd.
So on the drawn out stuff...? I just start up the ad hominem machine and let my inner 4chan shine through. :-)
For the curious re:4chan.
You were warned.
I read as many blogs as I always have... probably more... but I'm commenting less. Time is just too scarce nowadays for me to be able to both read AND comment all the time.
On this end more and more blogs are getting a great big meh from me lately and eventually I just stop going. It's not out of a personal loss of affinity for the person or anything, just... meh.
I think I've going to few blogs. I'm definitely commenting less. But I'm writing a fiction too, and that keeps me away from blogs I use to go to just out of loyalty.
I noticed it was really slow around the holidays, and had a hard time picking back up, But I'm getting more comments than ever before.
Go figure.
And from the look of your progress graph you're moving like a banshee. 40,000+ words already? I'd be done by that point through just being exhausted!
I definitely think the blogging world is going strong as ever, but I am getting a lot choosier about who I read, for sure. I never miss your posts because your mind is an awesome place. It's hard to get around to all the blogs I subscribe to and actually comment, but a few, like yours, I make the time to visit.
For a few months, I stopped blogging. It wasn't planned, but I was going through some emotional drama and I didn't have the energy to post it, so I avoided blogging in general. Even on my blog, I am really, really private.
My mind has a zip code...?
Sometimes reading stuff that's too personal is too painful. I'm not against it, and I recognize it's a phenomenon and will be done no matter what the hell I think about it. But I could never go where some go and am not sure I want to go where some may be taking me.
If that makes any sense.
Man, my comment if proof that I should never write before I've had my coffee. Sorry for the typos...
fewER and useD...
Erg.
IS... you mean.
b e earl pretty much summed it up for me.
when i first got involved in this blog thing, my mentor explained that if i wanted to be visited, i needed to visit. so i do.
so far, my luck has held.
You have a lot more to say than I do, Gino. I'n running out of both care and steam somedays.
The draw for me here was your clever prose. I remember after reading this blog the first time, your words stayed with me all day and I was hooked.
I see it like this. Blogging, for me is a way to keep my writers mind sharp. Heck, I could get lost in the sphere all day if I let myself. But life doesn't happen that way. When I started blogging I was unemployed and had far more time on my hands. Now, working full time, I just can't do it as much. But I still commit to do it daily because I love it.
You need not feel guilty for posting less. Fruitful employment, fufiling projects and familial commitment certainly rank higher than blogging.
And if anyone understands that shit, it's us.
And thanks for the compliment...*blushing*
ah... fruitful employment. True. Though it is coming in handy, I wouldn't call what I do fruitful.
Maybe more like vegetableful, but I hear you.
i purged about 3/4ths of my blogroll, so maybe it's not just you.
I admit to purging some as well, mostly because they had gone dormant.
I always wondered why out of the blue I'd be deleted from a blogroll, but no sleep was harmed in the initializing of the wonder.
I've just had so much shit to deal with recently that I've been commenting and reading less than I want. I like the blogosphere and I don't feel like it's shrinking. It's more in a state of constant flux.
I'm insecure enough to ask if I'm still on that list, too.
There are always good reasons to prioritize, Adam.
Yeah, I've had to realize that. Real life occasionally takes precedence over the internet.
I feel like my life in front of my body needs much more attention than usual. Plus I just got overdosed on OPD (other people's drama) and don't want to participate or encourage it.
So, buh-bye.
But I'm still reading. ish.
I know I've been commenting less (as evidenced by the fact that I'm posting this comment nearly a week after you've written the post). I need to clean out my feedreader with the idea that deletion doesn't necessarily reflect whether or not I like someone. That's a hard thing for me. And, btw? I read the train posts. I didn't always comment, but I was lurking. It was cool stuff. I just didn't have much to add.
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