[...learned #200] blogs are dead
July 20th, 2009 Graig
This will be my last post for this iteration of the blog.
I would like to say that it will be the last geekent blog entry ever, but that’s most likely a lie as I’ll no doubt return someday, but for now, I’m done.
“365 things…” I knew would be a challenge, and one I thought simpler than it actually was. The fact was that within the first two week I was already finding myself falling behind on the “daily” activity of blogging five times a day, and within two months I was playing catch-up more often than not. I love the concept and I wish I had the wherewithal to stick it through, but I’m tired of thinking about it, putting pressure on myself to update, and, honestly, I’m a little bored with it. I’ve been blogging almost non-stop for over seven years… seven bloody years!
What I initially started the blog for was to help keep me writing, to keep my fingers and mind fresh, but it eventually became the center of my writing. I’ve barely written any prose, scripts, fiction, dialogue or any of the sort in years because I’m too busy updating the nuances of my life and my consumption. I mean, I’m writing all this for myself, and really, I’m the only one applying pressure to do it, and that pressure is misguided. I should be applying pressure on myself to get some books written, work on those comic projects that have been festering for so long, focus on writing good reviews again… that sort of thing.
The blog was always for me, it’s never been about an audience, but the fact that I don’t really have an audience (my wife, my mom, Joan, Toast, GAK… I can count my regular readers on two hands, and I’m sure the irregular readers can be counted on my toes) makes the decision so much easier. Who am I letting down? Love you guys but I’m going to try to make something more worthwhile than a record of what I ate in a year.
Nobody blogs anymore. When I started there was a community of bloggers that made this insular activity a social one. People, life and technologies have changed, and that blogospheric community disappeared, if not exactly dissolved. It moved on to Facebook and Twitter and left me behind. There are two or three people I knew from back when that I can point to that are still actively blogging, and doing so because they’ve made something of it. They engage an audience, they make money from it, it’s not just a time consuming recreation but a part of their professional life. My professional life shouldn’t make room for blogging and my recreational life has just gotten busier.
Blogs are dead, unless you’re sponsored, unless you’re clever and funny, focussed and willing to network. I frankly don’t have the time. I’m too busy blogging to network, too busy trying to maintain my own ideas and ideals to try and wrangle people to come and share in them. Let’s be frank though, I’m just not unique enough. My opinions on popular culture, well, they are better formed than most, but I’m perhaps not as informed as those who do this professionally, leading to the question of who am I to say these things? My opinions on life, well, I’m not Jon Stewart or Jerry Seinfeld, I’m not Henry Rollins or Rick Mercer. I don’t find enough humour or outrage in what goes on in my life or the world around me to make observations of interest to few other than myself, and I can tell my family and friends these things in person… what do I need a blog for. What I have to say, it’s personal, sort of, but it’s not unique.
Thing is I’ve kind of stopped using the internet for anything other than blogging. I don’t really read things on-line all that often anymore, I don’t visit any website with any regularity, and I don’t have any other blogs which I read with regularity. Having to maintain this blog has taken away my enthusiasm for what the internet has available. I spend my days at work on a computer and when I come home, I don’t really want to be on the computer anymore if I don’t have to be and I formatted this blog so that I’d have to be.
So, as I’ve rambled on for over 600 words, I find I’ve lost my train of thought, which is another reason I’m calling it quits. I have distractions, lovely little distractions aged 2 weeks and 7 years, not to mention a beautiful wife and a fantastic house, all of which make blogging seem unimportant in comparison. If I’m going to take time away from these wonderful things in my immediate life, not to mention the many great friends I have in my extended life who I don’t spend nearly enough time with, then I might as well be doing something worthwhile and meaningful with that time.
Yes, there was a time when this blog was worthwhile, when it was meaningful to me, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t still have some meaning, but it doesn’t have the same purpose it once did for me and I’m only cheating myself to continue doing it out of some sense of misguided devotion.
“365 Things…” comes to a close with three up-to-date categories ending at 200 and two others shy of the mark by 47 and 38 posts, and I know I’d never catch up. In 200 days I’ve logged over 800 posts, which is kind of insane when you look at it, and I’m better for spending the next 165 days doing something, almost anything else.
I’ll still be on-line, over at Second Printing from time to time as I feel the need to ramble on about comics or comic-related things, and also at Thor’s Comic Column at Chud.com where I’ll still be reviewing comic books, and on Facebook, which I visit with more than monthly regularity now. Maybe I’ll even Twitter, but not likely, because the mere mention of “tweets” in the media sends me into wincing spasms. I’m also updating my Flickr account with pictures of my beautiful daughter and my family.
So, “365 Things…” is over. geekent is far from done, however, just done for now.
Tags: 200
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