The Burden of Blogging

Rather frequently, I’m struck by the utter futility of blogging. As I’ve noted before, it’s not like I want my blog to be of the “Dear Diary” variety — so I avoid going down that route — yet when I write about my interests it’s not as if I’m able to do so keeping in pace with popular culture (hence the irony of writing reasonably dated reviews). While I can piece together a pretty decent yarn it’s no secret that there are so many others that can write much better. And then there’s the slippage: when I began I had the time to post something new every other day or so; now, I seldom have the luxury to think coherently about what to write, nevermind actually composing it.

All that, plus the occasional reminder that, well, to blog in this day and age seems more and more passé.

To some extent, I’m inclined to agree. Yes, in a Web 2.0 world there are just so many avenues by which people can get their message across better than by simply blogging. But that depends fundamentally on why a person (or group) set out to blog in the first place. Setting up a blog today in the hopes of becoming the next internet sensation is, in a word, unrealistic. That ship has already sailed. Mostly, anyway. Yet if the motivation is simply to have an outlet, to keep a little space out in the ether where one can just write while occasionally hoping others stumble upon it and enjoy themselves in the process, how can one go wrong by blogging?

I won’t lie: I have to remind myself of this. Constantly. Being unable to post anything new promptly, or finding that the site received hardly any traffic on a particular day, or otherwise having to face the reality that even friends/family hardly keep tabs with my blog — if at all — can be depressing. But the real coup is that I have a blog at all, modest readership or no.

[Twitter, Flickr and Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004 (via Wired)]