I have never blogged about subjects people want me to. I have always been contradictory. I always derived a certain amount of pleasure from blogging simply because I love writing and reading so much.
Purely personal bloggers understand what I mean. This blog will never have the stats it once had, but I didn’t begin a blog looking for “popularity” money or status. I began it as a way to see unedited words in print.
I have said that so often it’s become a cliche. It became something bigger than I had desired or knew what to do with. Well, I’m pretty good at getting publicity but I’m a good writer.
Many people don’t seem to grasp the concept that there are people who will read a non-focused, non-niche blog by a blogger who claims no area of expertise simply because the posts are interesting.
And said blogger doesn’t give progress reports on her book, sample chapters or usually talk about it. I have been told by mainstream reporters how unusual that is for a blogger. I don’t want to be defined as Pia Savage, blogger, who is forever writing a book, who talks about 9/11, a changed city and a dead mother.
Really I hope that you know me well enough by the time it comes out to want to buy it, and I know a few people who will gladly pimp it for me.
This past year, and I do measure years by school years, now from 9/11 to 9/11, has been about reclaiming me. I’m trying to uncomplicate my life and find the joy that has been missing.
There are times in the blogosphere I feel adrift. Who am I? I don’t have hubby and/or kids to talk about. I don’t really enjoy politics–once it was fascinating now….
I intuitively understand how to optimize my search engine whatevers and that’s a bad thing because when I read posts on that side of the blogosphere I can’t comment and tell the blogger how brilliant he/she is, and run to my blog and link to the post.
Thank you for smoking is one of my top ten all time films. It did put viral marketing in its place.
I hate how obsessed I become with a subject and have to learn everything about it. Nobody awards PHD’s in blogging yet.
I’m always talking about time away from blogging. I need to recapture the joy in writing and this blog feels like a noose that keeps me from feeling good about my writing. It’s one big responsibility I don’t need, at least for the time I’m in North Myrtle.
I haven’t had a pure vacation in three years and won’t this time, but at least I can let my blog coast.
I feel guilty because new people are always discovering my blog, but I have month by month archives and categories I wouldn’t really trust because sometimes I forget to label posts with all the relevant ones.
I have a light humorous side that I don’t show in my posts. I would like to. I don’t cheerlead for movements or for me. When it comes to me I tend to do the opposite because that comes so naturally to me, and I want to change that.
I want to write and I want to enjoy myself and I was doing so well in the later area this summer, but today, the day I was going to spend all day at the beach, I found myself crying not just for the people who died, or buildings that were lost, or city that has changed but for me also.
I’m not the person I was six years ago and many people claim that to be a good thing. I’m not even the person I was four months ago
I have toughened. Paradoxly I have found that to experience joy one must let out the naysayers, and I don’t find that easy. It’s my instinct to try to fix what’s broken; to right wrongs and ultimately to let myself be used by people who are too needy of me.
This is so hard. This is where I count on blogger support. But I can’t ask you to do for me when I’m not really willing to do for others outside of my family and true friends right now. They need me and I must reserve my giving strength for them.
I am so drained of all energy I feel as if I could sleep the next three weeks away. It’s not depression drain, but the kind of draining that comes from being pulled in too many places by too many people.
Then I feel guilty because i feel only people with spouses and/or children or truly important jobs have that right. I go back to feeling that I must be all things for all people. It’s not easy being me.
Please understand that this isn’t about you but me and the changes I’m undergoing.
When they begin awarding PHD’s in blogging, I will claim mine.
And I so resent the people who say that stream of consciousness blogs should be password protected to prevent inflicting their blogs on the world. Isn’t the blogosphere large enough for all?
I think it’s more than fine to let your blog coast once in awhile, he says as he thinks to himself he could never not blog for more than three days 🙂
You are who you are and whoever you wish to become. I enjoy reading your thoughts.
I feel the urge to fight you on:
because no spouse/no children/no important jobs one doesn’t have the right to feel drained from being pulled in so many directions….
I see many people assume because someone is single they can dump the project on them. Being pulled in many directions is something that applies to anyone.
And even the blogging world is not equal – people will accept what they aren’t given, if only to a point.
I totally get what you are saying in all aspects of blogging and viral marketing. I too, have had to take a step back from the the blog, just because I felt it was getting to be too much and I had other goals in my life that needed more attention, like finishing my Masters degree thesis.
I posted maybe a few times a month while finishing my thesis. Of course, I got dropped from blogrolls and memes because I wasn’t posting more frequently and when I did, it wasn’t for the 30 second attention span; I was posting solely for myself. This is when I kind of got a little ticked because in the end all of it, I don’t want someone to dictate when I should post, how often I should post, how long the post should be, etc. I started the blog for me, a place to vent, a place to look back on, to document my victories and failures of life…it wasn’t about blogrolls and memes…or even about posting things that I think my readers would like to see, but it became that. I’ve made a promise to myself…no more memes and no more worrying about keeping myself on blogrolls. If people like what I say, they will read, if not, oh well.