Blatigue - Blog Fatigue
For many, blogging is a way to express themselves in a manner that they have never before been afforded - regardless of audience. For others, it is a route to fame and microfortunes. Whatever the direction, there is one undeniable truth - managing a successful, current blog is a great deal of work.
Depending on the blog's particular mix of the blog entry archetypes, the amount of effort can be casual to outright arduous. As readers, it's often easy for us to overlook the wayfinding, research, and dedication it may take to get information down on pixels.
Today I received an interesting comment on my previous post from someone I know to be a frequent reader of the site. One of the things that was creating a small annoyance was my cross posting of entries here and on GetReal. Surprisingly (though perhaps it shouldn't be), the reader is actually subscribed to both sites so they were being pinged twice with the same information. I definitely can see this as annoying.
As I explained in the comments, though I don't want to alienate any of my readers, I just don't know how large the mix is to preclude posts to both. In addition, the material I am researching and writing is not only on topic for both sites, but it also takes a great deal of time to prepare and publish. For example, the analysis of Yahoo! Messenger required not only researching Yahoo!s claims about the new features, but also installing, testing, and summarizing the important (from my point of view) aspects. It probably took more than an hour once you account for writing up the HTML, spell and grammar checking, and publishing.
It's never easy to please everyone. Although, I guess I should be grateful that there's even someone on the other end paying attention. It has become commonplace for blogs to be equated to conversations, though sometimes these conversations are solely with ourselves.
Coincidentally, The New York Times is running a piece in Circuits titled " For Some, the Blogging Never Stops". Here's a choice snippet from that very piece:
The constant search for bloggable moments is what led Gregor J. Rothfuss, a programmer in Zurich, to blog to the point of near-despair. Bored by his job, Mr. Rothfuss, 27, started a blog that focused on technical topics.
"I was trying to record all thoughts and speculations I deemed interesting," he said. "Sort of creating a digital alter ego. The obsession came from trying to capture as much as possible of the good stuff in my head in as high fidelity as possible."
For months, Mr. Rothfuss said, he blogged at work, at home, late into the night, day in and day out until it all became a blur - all the while knowing, he added, "that no one was necessarily reading it, except for myself."
When traffic to the blog, greg.abstract.ch started to rise, he began devoting half a day every day and much of the weekend to it. Mr. Rothfuss said he has few memories of that period in his life aside from the compulsive blogging.
In the immortal words of Bob Harris (Lost in Translation), "Thank you. This is hard." And that's all I have to say about that *wink*.