Whither the Blog?

Weird flower outside my office building

A few years ago, I had dozens of friends who kept blogs online. These days, there are only a few. A month or two ago, another friend who blogged posted that she was retiring from it after going several months without a post. She doesn’t have the time anymore, and Facebook has kind of taken over. And then my sister posted some thoughts about blogs and the internet in general in her first post in more than 10 months.

It got me thinking about my own little site here.

A quick look at my dashboard shows that I have written 3,284 posts (!) since July 2001 (!!). That’s an average of almost 6 posts per week overall, although that number is certainly boosted enhanced by the early years where I posted multiple times per day. I’d be close to 3,500 if I included the posts I wrote on the 2-3 self-coded “online diaries” that I started in 1998 and maintained until I started using third party blogging systems in mid-2001.

I’ve never been able to really explain the blog thing, because I can’t really claim that I love to write. I enjoy it, but I’ve never had fantasies about becoming a writer or anything like that. I’ve tried many times over the years to keep a written diary, and it’s never lasted for more than a few months at a time. (A few years ago I bought a 5-year diary where you only have room to write a sentence or two each day, and I can’t even keep up with that!)

So I don’t really know why I blog, but I guess there are a lot of little reasons. I like having a place to write down my random thoughts. I like having a place to share photos. I like having a place where people can keep up with what I’m doing if they choose. And yes, something about the public nature of a blog appeals to me. I guess I have a bit of an exhibitionist somewhere in there.

Although I still average 2-4 posts per week most of the time, my own blogging has decreased in recent years. (Not to mention that while I used to love redesigning my template from time to time, I’ve now been saying “oh I need to make something better than this default WordPress template” for a year, at least, and probably longer.) I think life has a tendency to settle down as one gets older — either that, or I am just far less angst-ridden at 34 than I was at 22 or even 26 (um, definitely true). Still, I can’t really imagine abandoning my little internet home. After 11+ years, it’s kinda become a habit!

Lately, I read a combination of mommy blogs, craft blogs, cooking blogs, and home decor/DIY blogs. As you have probably noticed, they make me want to start posting more of that type of stuff myself. Many of them also treat it like a job (which makes sense, I suppose, since many of the blogs are income sources for them) and stick to “blogging schedules” where they write about certain things on certain days. I don’t have any intention of starting to schedule things, and I don’t have any illusions of ever making money from my blog. I’ve given some thought to signing up with Google ads or BlogHer or something like that, but I don’t really draw the traffic necessary to make that worthwhile.

But we’ll see. I have no idea what will happen after baby girl is born. Maybe I’ll blog less because I’ll have less free time. Maybe I’ll blog more — after all, I’ll have a cute baby to write about!