To blog or not to blog, that 'was' the question

I took a vacation from blogging over the weekend and, frankly, I am happy I did. In fact, by the end of last week I was even pondering the idea of shutting the blog down. I thought the vehicle had passed the two-year mark on March 4 and in that time over 7,500 people have passed through my portals. Some came to stop and chat, some became valued contacts and friends; some just had a look, and some were spamming weasels.

Anyway, I decided I wouldn’t smite the beast. In the first place, I value my ties here and I would simply miss the wit, wisdom and whimsy of so many of you. Secondly, and more professionally than egocentrically, I value my blog. In that I had to get back to the reasons why I began blogging.


Sometimes those reasons get a bit obscured for me, and that is why I have to return to my original motivations. They were:


1) As a long-time newspaper columnist I thoroughly missed the process of writing a regular column, and the blog fulfilled that creative need.


2) In terms of my skill-set, such as it is, blogging limbered me up for my professional writing, and in that it has been invaluable.


3) I wanted to link with other people who were in the same creative place as professionals, freelancers, or hobbyists. I’ve read some mighty fine stuff over the last two years, and a lot of it, even with hobbyists, is decidedly of professional caliber.


4) I wanted to link with people in other parts of the world, and have succeeded in so doing.


5) Finally, I wanted to establish some human links that might, and I say this thoroughly selfishly, help me professionally in terms of remuneration, wider exposure and again, broader contacts. Writers, if they like to eat regularly and pay the mortgage cannot exist in a vacuum.

What I will need to do, however, is get back to my root reasons for indulging this process (and it is a pleasant process and indulgence) and exercise a bit of personal discipline. I know others of you have arrived at this juncture because you have written on the subject.

To a degree my blog had become too time-consuming and it had also become too much of a diversion and an escape into some ether realm. Not that it was detracting from ‘real’ life, because I am a real life person with non-cyber friends and connections that I cherish. But, there were times, especially when I was feeling a bit overburdened with other realities, that blogging became too much of an enticement to pull back, to – in stating the case crudely – ‘fuck the dog’ rather than get on with whatever I had to get on with.

So, rather than retreat from something I value a lot, and to depart from people I also value a lot, I have just set a few ground-rules for myself. I have decided I won’t blog as regularly (as in feeling obligated to just get something posted for fear of missing a day) as I often have; I won’t blog on weekends for the most part: I will endeavor to turn out blogs that are not sloppy in style or process, and I confess I have been guilty of that on occasion.

I’ll see how that works for me.

Oh, and I took the test. I don’t yet qualify as ‘blog addicted.’ Phew.