when good blogs go bad


i am looking at you, joseph. donna. jacob. brian. sometimes andy. i am looking at your extinct blogs, kiker and chris perry. and i am looking at you for one reason. all of your blogs (or lack thereof) drive me crazy. don't get me wrong. i love your posts. every last one of them. from ipod playlists to talking about tea to ranting about law firms to designing weird stuff that my brain could never imagine to killdozers. i love them all! and that is my point. there aren't enough of them!

i guess there are as many reasons that blogs are created as there are blogs, themselves. the root of all them (or at least part of the root) stemming from the want or, in some cases, need to share some part of "you" with THE REST OF THE WORLD (or the three people you think may read your blog). you don't see your friends enough and want to create some outlet for conversation or community? start a blog. you want to jot down thoughts that you usually keep inside so that maybe your daughter(s) might understand you a little better when they are older? start a blog. you feel like you are an expert on a given subject and it is your calling to share that expertise with THE REST OF THE WORLD? start a blog. you want to journal and your pen is out of ink? start a blog. you want to feel that someone hears you other than yourself? start a blog. you want to bash someone but don't have the balls to say it to their face? start a blog. you want something that you feel like you and no one else has control over it's content, the "it's my blog/world" concept? start a blog. you like to read books and then watch movies made from books and then talk about how the book is better than the movie or vice-versa and why? start a blog. the list could go on and on and there is absolute merit to every reason that anyone could come up with i suppose. one would hope that a blog's creation would not be born out of malicious intent, but those are out there too. and the people that started those blogs would probably have pretty good, if not reasonable, arguments for them. blogs are created for hundreds upon thousands of reasons.

the reasons that blogs are maintained, though, are significantly fewer. the internet is littered with a drastic number of dead blogs walking. link after link of old livejournals, blogspots, wordpresses, among others that have been left with nothing more substantial anymore than a permanent internet address. they have been abandoned. the reason behind their creation long since forgotten. and they stand as little more than a polaroid of some person's life when they thought using their disposable time putting finger to keyboard and sharing thoughts for THE REST OF THE WORLD to see seemed like a worthwhile effort. happening across these url's make me sad. i think to myself, "what a waste." i wonder what happened that this person stopped writing. did they piss somebody off? did they run out of time? did they grow out of the exercise? did someone call them a pansy? did they get a real job? did they never really like to write in the first place?

in most cases, that's what it really boils down to, right? getting some enjoyment from writing down your own thoughts for posterity's sake. taking a step further than trusting your long term memory to remind you why "this" was important on "that" day. chances are that you are going to enjoy your posts way more than anyone else. why? because they are your thoughts. yours and yours alone. you always will be more invested than your readers, and that should be ok. because if you are blogging, you are writing for yourself, right? you hope to enlighten or entertain or educate your readers along the way, but, in the end, it's for you.

and some people just don't have it in them. to write. to find time to write. some people learn that they'd rather communicate in a more direct or old school manner like the phone, or worse, in person. pshh. how dated are they? and that's ok too. i don't judge them (harshly).

why those mentioned above drive me crazy is because i am guilty of raising my expectations of them. and lowering my expectations of myself.

they blogged once!!! that must mean they'll blog all the time. and since i miss them and want to know what is going on in their world all the time but don't feel like i have the time (or sometimes energy) to pick up the phone and call them or go to dreamland with them or travel to florida to see them, this will make it easier for ME. i won't have to try as hard. i won't have to worry about how they are doing because they are going to let me know in no fewer than bi-weekly posts and i can still feel like i am connected to them even though i am doing very little to further the cause of our relationship myself.

they didn't do anything wrong. they all have families and jobs and school and things that are more important to them than their blog. so do i. but, then again, i am pretty narcissistic. i really like reading my own thoughts. why else would i spend a lazy off day posting three times? it's not like i am being paid by the word. it's not like i couldn't find something more constructive to do around the house (even though i would have cut the grass today if it wasn't raining). this makes me happy. the writing. and the reading. and the thinking about what i'll jot down next.

good blogs don't really go bad. i just miss my friends sometimes. and my family. and sometimes i am too tired to do anything about it other than type.

today was a good day for me. thanks for sharing.