Bored with my blog

When I started blogging back in 2002 I was totally into it and posted as much as I could - maybe four or five times a day if the mood struck me. The problem with that is that you start to get into a mode where everything you do in life seems to be simply excuses to write about it in your blog. Go to the movies? Sure - I can write a review about it later! Also it takes a lot of time - and you're either blogging or working, but not both (unless you blog for work, which a couple years ago wasn't really an option).

So I eventually dropped down to a post a day, maybe two, and that's how I've been posting since. It's important to keep a habit of posting consistently though, because if you don't, you'll find ways to avoid blogging until you eventually just let it go. (Well, others do that, I find myself having to tell myself *not* to blog.)

Then I took an 18 month break or so, and now a year after I picked up blogging again (first with the Mowser blog, and then withe my personal blog a month or two later), I'm thinking that daily posting is getting a bit old. I've been doing it for years... and it also just doesn't seem to ever get any decent feedback any more beyond the random email from an interested reader. Sure, I've posted a couple of times over the past year that got a bunch of links and response posts on other blogs - but it's completely hit or miss, and it seems extremely rare to have "blog conversations" any more. It's all just Twitters or comments and it just doesn't do it for me. (The comments lately have been especially bad, so I just got rid of them all together... I mean, one moron recently suggested that I *delete* the post he was commenting on. After that I just lost my ability to tolerate them.)

So now I'm thinking about going one way or another with this blog... sort of ratcheting down to just one post a week - or a couple a month - but putting enough effort and analysis into the posts so they're more like articles (something I would actually enjoy doing, honestly). Or going the other way and making this blog into a FriendFeed-style tumble-blog of random content pulled from various sources: Twitters, thoughts, images, video, links, etc.

I've always considered blogging as serving some sort of purpose. Posting about brainstorms or ideas or making predictions would help me clarify those thoughts, and also solicit feedback as well from someone who may know better than me, for example. It's also a hobby, and helps reduce stress by having an outlet where you can put your ideas or frustrations. This is mostly what I've used this blog for.

But your blog is also sort of a home-base - a social-network independent profile page where others can come to learn more about you. From this point of view, having *just* a blog nowadays is somehow incomplete. It would be like a social-network profile without any images, video, links, etc. Therefore adding in a bunch of other content would be like filling in the other details that are sort of expected nowadays from a site that's worth paying attention to. I'm not sure if that's really the direction I want to go though.

Anyways, this is one of those normal "blog crisis" moments that pops up yearly for anyone writing a blog. Why am I doing it, who am I doing it for and do I want to continue, and if so, how? I'm going to mull the answer for a bit and decide which direction to go.

Either way, I wouldn't expect daily blog posts any more in my typical "image plus 4 paragraphs" sort of way. Time for a change!

:-)

-Russ

< Previous         Next >