Is blogging over?
Is blogging so--2008? So vieux jeu? I notice that a number of my blogging friends have closed up shop. Gone out of business. Folded up their tents and stolen away.
In general they were people who hadn't run out things to say. I know some writers keep on writing long after they have ceased to be funny or even interesting; Russell Baker comes to mind. A genuinely witty writer, he just kept on and on, getting less interesting by the minute. Art Buchwald was another. A contemporary example is Maureen Dowd, whose cleverness ceased to be amusing before the beginning of the second Bush administration.
That may be what has happened to me. My family, on the whole a far from entertaining bunch, provided some entertainment nevertheless. I think I may have run out of amusing anecdotes about them. I've been racking my brain, trying to come up with something amusing. If I do, I'll let you know.
I also looked at my statistics. While I started out with about 8 readers, undoubtedly people who had encountered my blog by mistake, I gradually worked my way up to 100. Now they are down to 35. I notice also that I am spending a lot of time grumbling about politics, a sour enough subject. Obama has stopped being funny and started being alarming. His daily sermonettes are beginning to wear on me. And the United States Congress are just plain scary. If this is what the people in power are like, what on earth can we expect from ordinary citizens?
Our educational system, from pre-K to Phd, has stopped educating people and started to bolster their self-esteem. But so what? Everybody knows that already. Pretty soon only monks in cloisters will preserve the remnants of knowledge for future generations. If there are any monks left, after we have apologized our way into becoming an islamic republic.
So, what do you think? Should I keep it up, or close up shop?
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7 comments:
Miriam, the world needs more sane voices, not fewer. Keep it up, please.
Miriam is deliriam. Keep posting. When the madness of it all finally sinks in, you will have left a trail of bread crumbs which the hungry poopologists will devour in trying to locate exactly where into the universal plume of esctasy you slipped.
You have to know how I feel about this! Even if you think you've told all your family and library stories, you'll think of something else, I'm sure. And I want to read it if you do.
And I know that it gives me comfort to know that others are alarmed about the government (rather than amused). I live in the DC area, so you can imagine what it is like.
Plus, I really like your paintings.
I've been asking the same question myself.
And my readership, for all intents, had shrunk to "one".
So I concluded - the blog have returned to the original meaning: a diary of sorts, a private journal. In some sense it's easier to write now: I don't have to spend so much time explaining things that are obvious to me, or having occasional irritating type of reader - a guy who'd never get the point of the post and keep buggering me with his clueless commentary (like Dick Stanley), or one who'd link to a post that I marked with "to be edited later" tag and misrepresent it in his summary - and then be outraged when I politely asked him to remove the mention, like Snoopy The Goon.
Of course, these matters every one decides for him/herself; depends on what were your expectations for blogging when you start it.
I can say, though, if you decide to "close up shop", I will miss you.
Thanks for the support, everyone. Will continue until I feel like stopping, or maybe longer than that.
I'm on a downward cycle myself: traffic is about 60-70 percent of what it was three years ago. Doesn't faze me in the least: I figure, there are three times as many blogs competing for eyeballs, and if I've retained most of mine, I'm doing better than many.
Besides, what would I do otherwise? Twitter?
CG: Good point.
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