“The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public…The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes…Then there is the third category, the category of who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love…And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present.”
– Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Via the comments on a Bitch Ph.D. post comes this must-read from The Nonist on “Blog Depression”:
I would say something like “it would be funny if it didn’t hit so close to home,” but the fact is that it’s funny because it hits so close to home.
I don’t know how non-bloggers will react to it, but I’m confident that it will strike a very deep chord in the neurotic brain center of every blogger who reads it. The spouses and partners of bloggers will probably laugh the hardest — once, that is, they’ve stopped yelling, “isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten months?!”
The pressure that the Nonist speaks of is very real for most bloggers. Once a blog gains an audience, the blogger feels a silent (and occasionally not-so-silent) demand for new content on a daily, or more-than-daily, basis. One sees, through site traffic reports, how many people are visiting one’s site, and one feels guilty if there is no new material for those visitors to read.
That pressure can be crushing, and the Nonist’s advice — to get a grip, to keep things in perspective, and to remember why you first started blogging — is spot on.
I started this blog as an outlet for my writing and my political activism. But what has kept it going, and made it worthwhile, is the sense that a community of readers has gelled around it. That sense of community, I think, is one of the best things the blogosphere has to offer. The recent galvanization on behalf of Latoyia Figueroa is only the latest example of the kind of good such a community can do.
But it’s important to remember that, for most of us, blogging is a largely unpaid hobby, something we do because we love it, and because we just can’t stop writing.
When I first started the blog, I decided that I would try to post every day. As the audience has grown, I’ve tried to post more than once a day.
The more frequently I post, the harder it has become to find a balance between constantly providing new content and posting only those pieces of writing that I truly I believe in. I often publish something too quickly, and then continue to edit it long after many readers have already taken it in.
That speaks, I think, to one of the central paradoxes of blogs: times seems to move more quickly in the blogosphere than it does in the real world; an event that occurs in the morning can seem stale by the afternoon. But that sense of blog postings as ephemeral and fleeting is offset by the knowledge that they have a long afterlife. One quickly finds that the wave of initial readers is supplanted, in the long run, by an undertow of secondary readers who find their way to the site through search engines such as google.
All of this is a long way of saying that I’m still trying to find my way in the wonderful world of blogging. It has brought me much happiness and satisfaction so far, but I’m also conscious of the toll it has taken on my academic work. Don’t get me wrong — I blog because I love to blog, not because I feel pressure to do it. And I’m grateful for every single reader that I have. But I do struggle with the sense (the self-imposed sense, as the Nonist reminds me) that I need to cover every event of political importance, every travesty of the Bush administration, on this site.
I hope that, over time, I will find ways to find a balance that makes me, and the readers of this site, happy. Because, as the Nonist makes clear, that’s what it’s all about in the end.
11 Comments on "The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging"
The Heretik:
KUnder and this
That speaks, I think, to one of the central paradoxes of blogs: times seems to move more quickly in the blogosphere than it does in the real world; an event that occurs in the morning can seem stale by the afternoon. But that sense of blog postings as ephemeral and fleeting is offset by the knowledge that they have a long afterlife.
Nicely done.
ol cranky:
Well there’s a reason to stay on the D list, the last thing I need is one more thing to be depressed about.
Idyllopus:
Blogging is very different from creating and managing content for a website. One of its negatives, as is pointed out here and seconded by Heretik is the compression of time, the idea of material being dated within even a few hours. Yet this being offset by the long afterlife. It is something I’ve meditated on for a long while, for which reason I try periodically to go deep in people’s blogs and look over what has been previously written. I like Heretik’s way of managing by giving links to former posts on the topic, which is something I used to try to do but became lazy about it. I’m a poor manager of categories and I suspect a number of people who use them are, since posts can quite often fit under a number of different headings. Categories work fine in some areas but in others aren’t that efficient in making available perspective and analysis that needn’t be rehashed and rephrased with every single outrage and may play a part in blogger burn-out.
Effective blogger management of entries and content is something that needs work so that periodic content is not lost and retains the archival presence that it does in traditional websites. I haven’t worked on it in the tools available to me via my blogging platform.
This concerns just one of the issues addressed but I think it’s an important one as far as the faith in blogs as a long-term resource.
Rod:
Uh-oh. Blogging about blogging. It’s getting kind of meta.
Frank:
Wow, right at the core…and as I write this I think I need to update my blog…yikes…thanks for this.
Thom H:
Matt, that’s a great link, and a wonderful commentary on it, thanks. Just two quick remarks.
First, I think there is some real value in trying to write 5 (or more times) a week. But obviously, and for good reason, the pros like Paul Krugman limit themselves to 2 published columns a week–and even doing that with quality is a killer.
Second, I enjoy just making the rounds and checking in–as I’m doing now. But I agree that people shouldn’t feel the need to offer an “alternative analysis”–too often hastily prepared and ill-informed–on every possible topic. In such cases, the blogger is just playing MSM pundit–the sort of “professional” idiocy that drove many of us to the web in first place.
So minor blogging everyday isn’t much different than e-mail or phone calls or conversation: just keeping in touch and making the rounds. But trying to be serious 24/7/365 — every blogger his or her own CNN –that’s a little crazy.
Best to all.
Agitprop:
Nice find Matt. Sometimes I feel like deleting my entire blog out of pure angst.
upyernoz:
am i the only one who sometimes can only manage to post if i pretend that there is no audience? blogging is easier for me if i imagine that no one is reading it. that doesn’t fit me into any of the ULB categories.
i’m not always like that. sometimes i crave comments. but usually i’m just looking for an outlet so i don’t rant too much to my friends. of course, since i now know most of the people who read my site, i guess that’s exactly what i am doing
PLS:
Yes. Yes. Yes. Three of us created and are sustaining WhirledView—which you should check out (http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview), but it’s a great big metastasizing monster that’s taking over my life and my buddies’, too. I feel guilty about going on vacation. I’m not writing much poetry anymore. I’m not even writing letters or personal email. I tell my friends to read the blog if they want to know what I think–or call me. I still answer the phone. My son tells me I shouldn’t blow off my friends, but WhirledView has regulars now and Googlers find us and we’re making a name for ourselves–and I need to stop here because I’ve got a half dozen really terrific ideas……..
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brendan:
I went through a very long period with no blogging at all. I finally decided to largely give up political blogging (although there’s still a little bit that pops up from time to time) because so many people do it better than I do, or have a more informed opinion.
I need a nap.
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