Wilting Under The Spotlight [by Pogo]
A tiny corner of The Net's a-ruffle this week with the departure (again) of Peter at Naked Blog.
I've done it myself so often now that I've actually lost count. It's a scary thing, this blogging. You start off as just another anonymous website. Post and forget. Then you get your first comment. A rush of excitement... I have a reader!. You go into overdrive. You get more comments. You start to feel important. Somebody likes your stuff enough to come back for more. You're validated.
You become obsessed with your stats. Look at that! Another three regular readers this week!
You're convinced that what you're saying is seriously earth-shattering stuff. Why else would people come back, time and time again? You really count!
After a while you start to get irritated. You pour an hour or more's effort into a witty and well-reasoned post. And nobody says anything. You do it again. Nothing.
You write a throwaway two-liner about your hoover blowing up, and your comment box fills up.
You begin to suspect that your readers are vacuous fools.
You start writing snotty stuff, to provoke a reaction. No comments, but your stats start to drop away.
You begin to seethe. The words fuck it occur with alarming frequency as you fire up Blogger to have a rant.
Then one day you think enough's enough. You delete everything. You post a parting soapbox rant, and walk away. You spend a day or two checking your regulars for sorrowful postings about your inexplicable demise.
The liberation is amazing. No more playing to an audience. No more worries about stats. No more I could blog that thoughts are you're wandering round Sainsburys, or crossing the street, or stuck in a traffic jam.
After a week or two you begin to miss it. You wonder what on Earth posessed you to storm off like that. You feel like a pillock. You start to wish you hadn't jacked it in. But you made such a fuss of going that you can't just pile back in with a silly grin and expect people to carry on reading you. After all, you've probably just insulted half of them.
You resume blogging after another couple of weeks. Slink quietly back onto the stage, lurking in the wings. You don't announce anything. That would be too arrogant. You feel very very silly. But it's nice to be back.
Yeah, blogging does strange things to people.
I've done it myself so often now that I've actually lost count. It's a scary thing, this blogging. You start off as just another anonymous website. Post and forget. Then you get your first comment. A rush of excitement... I have a reader!. You go into overdrive. You get more comments. You start to feel important. Somebody likes your stuff enough to come back for more. You're validated.
You become obsessed with your stats. Look at that! Another three regular readers this week!
You're convinced that what you're saying is seriously earth-shattering stuff. Why else would people come back, time and time again? You really count!
After a while you start to get irritated. You pour an hour or more's effort into a witty and well-reasoned post. And nobody says anything. You do it again. Nothing.
You write a throwaway two-liner about your hoover blowing up, and your comment box fills up.
You begin to suspect that your readers are vacuous fools.
You start writing snotty stuff, to provoke a reaction. No comments, but your stats start to drop away.
You begin to seethe. The words fuck it occur with alarming frequency as you fire up Blogger to have a rant.
Then one day you think enough's enough. You delete everything. You post a parting soapbox rant, and walk away. You spend a day or two checking your regulars for sorrowful postings about your inexplicable demise.
The liberation is amazing. No more playing to an audience. No more worries about stats. No more I could blog that thoughts are you're wandering round Sainsburys, or crossing the street, or stuck in a traffic jam.
After a week or two you begin to miss it. You wonder what on Earth posessed you to storm off like that. You feel like a pillock. You start to wish you hadn't jacked it in. But you made such a fuss of going that you can't just pile back in with a silly grin and expect people to carry on reading you. After all, you've probably just insulted half of them.
You resume blogging after another couple of weeks. Slink quietly back onto the stage, lurking in the wings. You don't announce anything. That would be too arrogant. You feel very very silly. But it's nice to be back.
Yeah, blogging does strange things to people.
3 Comments:
Haha! I defo recognise myself in that. Happily, I acknowledge an addiction and make no pretense of being about to quit for real. I might sulk a few days, though.
You're not wrong. Although I profess not to be a stats whore on focus on the fact that I although I blog to an audience, I write for me. I'm finding a huge catharsis in blogging these days.
Still, it's disturbing that I can spend an hour running around Hyde Park with 7000 and all I'm thinking is "Can i remember enough of this run to write an interesting blog post about it?", followed by "Oh my god I'm going to die!"
And the answer to "can I remember enough of this run" is invariably "No!"
I can relate! And I've only just started blogging. I'm a stats whore too. There. I've said it.
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