Blugging

Dale writes about why he began blogging. Fascinating.

I don't think I had any initial illusions about what I was doing. Writing to a friend. Who is no longer a friend. I went through a phase, while doing the nanowrimo, that I hoped I might one day be publishable, make some income writing - those dreams of fortune, if not fame. Silly, but mostly harmless. Staring at all the overwrought fiction I never want to read, I eventually came to feel that the hardback novel was becoming somewhat passé, and the world didn't need another mediocre novelist. Always room for good ones, that wouldn't be me.

I have gone through phases when I get lots of comments, but maxed out at about 40 regulars. Which was nice, and a few times I've wondered if I could get enough readers to have a somewhat popular blog. Then, alarmed when I got a hundred hits in a day, and wrote particularly nasty posts just to get them to go away. Fame, when actually threatening, horrifies me. The intimate little circle, although it changes over the years, suits fine. I remember the first time I had someone reading and commenting, a stranger, I felt very strange about it. When I get less than twenty visitors, I do worry if I've become too dull, too off-putting. So I take more photos of Moby, and try to get the writing quality up again. It's a good feedback system.

I always feel strange about regulars whose bloga I am disinclined to read. I wonder what they see here. Gradually I've accepted that as inevitable, and I don't have to like their food for them to like mine.

When fecesbook emerged as a thing, I said Meh, tried it for a while and left unimpressed. Too much exposure, extra spam, not enough contact with anyone I really cared to contact that way, strangely impersonal, when email made more sense. Fostered a tendency for me to obsessively search for people I didn't even like. Blogging suited an introvert with a slow social thought process. I'm quick at work, and can often quip glibly, but it doesn't mean anything. When I want to work out my memories, I need the long process. Time to think through what I really mean, dig down to the truth at the very bottom. Find the right words.

I shall never twitter. So far on the other side of my needs and interests as to be useless. Like looking for a warm parka in the bikini department. A wool thong is not going to work.

In any respect.

Readers here come and go. A few old friends still visit occasionally, but they've pretty much heard all I have to way. New ones show up, I never know why, and I don't ask. Same as I read some blogs for a while, then feel I've read enough and drift away, only to stop in and wonder why I haven't been by more. I don't go searching very often, now and then, when the urge hits. When I check out the stats and see a new Came From site. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. I still get people probably clicking through from a blog roll of a site I once frequented, whose owner has not removed me. So, I leave on old sites I rarely visit, in case. Just in case. You never know.