It's like spring cleaning that you finally got around to doing . . . 18 months late.
I've cleaned out the side of my blog a bit. So now it looks like I have no friends. In reality, I have just as few friends as always but it turns out that a third of them quit blogging, and another third went private, so links aren't that useful. Besides, I'm not sure how many people actually visit the actual blog anymore, I assume they read it through other means. If you're deeply offended that you're not on the list anymore, maybe you should blog something more recently than 2010 (coughadamcough) or 2009 (ahemsuzannehackingsound).
But while we're here, what's become of blogs? It was so cool! Did facebook kill it? Did it turn out to not be as cool as we thought? Are we too lazy to type? I can't really point any fingers here, because my blog has barely been hanging onto activity for a while now. The last 6 years I've had 185, 131, 73, 66, 14 and 32 posts. That's a drop from on every other day, to once a month in 2011. For me, blogging revolves around interaction between me, the blogger, and you, the reader. I don't want this to sound like a plea for comments or something. If my blog isn't interesting, or doesn't somehow elicit a response, there's no need to make one up just to make me feel better. (Though if you did a good job of hiding the fact that this was your own motivation, it would probably work. I'm just saying.) And really, this is probably the worst sort of post to get comments. It's about blogging for heaven's sake, and this blog was never meant to be a blog about blogging. It's a blog about me.
It's interesting that my blog really fell apart about the time we moved away from Utah and parked ourselves about 2,000 miles from just about anyone we knew. You'd think that my blog would have peaked in interest now that other means of communication were limited. But here's the funny thing: communication breeds more communication. Shannon and I see each other all the time, and we haven't yet run out of things to talk about! And it's not because we're some sort of magical perfect compliments to each other that share every interest imaginable. It's because I've always had the most to say to people I see the most. I don't have any special theories about why that is, so if you do, feel free to share.
So, in conclusion, this blog post took me forever to write, because I got distracted by cleaning my keyboard keys. And can anyone explain why the dirtiest one was Caps Lock, followed by "\". Whose grubby fingers are hitting those on my keyboard all the time?
7 comments:
As much as I'd love to leave this post commentless as some sort of ironic comment, I actually wanted to comment on something. I think you're take on the keyboard is backwards. Those keys aren't dirty because somebody is touching them but because they aren't. The constant contact has to keep the other keys fairly under control. (If there were much buildup it would move to the fingers, no?)
Brett and I were just talking last night about how blogs are dying out. ours certainly is only hanging on by a thread and the only thing we post anymore are pics and travelogues. Wahoo! remember how I used to spew all my crazy opinions out there? now, I just don't want to take the time. i do think FB does have something to do w/ it, but it won't last forever either. I wonder what the next big thing will be after FB dies out too.
Brett and I were just talking last night about how blogs are dying out. ours certainly is only hanging on by a thread and the only thing we post anymore are pics and travelogues. Wahoo! remember how I used to spew all my crazy opinions out there? now, I just don't want to take the time. i do think FB does have something to do w/ it, but it won't last forever either. I wonder what the next big thing will be after FB dies out too.
Alright! Sabrina joins the fray with a double comment!
I've felt that way about FB for a while, but I'm not sure it's the real reason. I haven't seen my posts on FB increase as my blogging decreased, and I don't see that as the case for the blogs I follow.
One possible explanation is demographics. I interact mainly with people who are about my age. Over the last 5 years my peers have gone from "half married, at most 1 kid" to "probably married, multiple kids, swimming lessons, soccer teams, PTA meetings, etc." Is it just that we're more busy?
My goal with my blog has always been entirely personal. I wanted it to be a place where I could organize and collect my thoughts, pictures, travelogs, etc.
I still keep a list of blog posts that I want to write, but I'm getting around to fewer and fewer of them.
So, I'll go ahead and post something right now (just give me a few days to get it done...).
Tyler: if your blog were entirely personal, why make it public? Write in your paper journal, or just use a word-processor. I'll agree that the effort to make the blog public is quite small, but I don't think it is completely non-existent.
I stopped blogging in 2009 [coughcough] because I started Facebooking. I have a limited amount of time I'm willing to spend on updating the internet on my life, and now I choose to do it there. If you want more in-depth stuff, I guess I can post longer things at Facebook.
I have a twitter account, but it's 99% just for following the twitter accounts of funny people. I tweet about twice a month, generally in response to someone else's tweet.
I love your blog because, if you haven't noticed, I'm really bad at emailing or phonecalling or keeping in touch in an active way. But I'm good at keeping in touch in a passive way, i.e. reading your blog and Facebook page.
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