Obligatory Status Update

December 14, 2004

For those of you who read this site I’m not dead. Rather I’ve taken a brief vaca­tion from kartooner.com to focus on col­lege finals, work on a top-secret project with Matt and pre­pare for a vaca­tion com­ing up in January.

A few months ago when I made the choice to go back to school, after a 3-year hia­tus, I real­ized that it would take a great deal of patience and ded­i­ca­tion and indeed it has. I’ve tried to divide my time between fam­ily, work, school and main­tain­ing this site and I have to drop one of them, tem­porar­ily, in order to focus on fur­ther­ing myself as an artist, stu­dent, father, hus­band and gamer.

I’ve noticed that a few of the sites that I visit on a daily basis have been expe­ri­enc­ing brief hia­tuses, mostly due to school and oth­ers the result of “blog­ger burnout”, a com­mon occurence amongst those of us who live and breath in the blog­ging realm. Let’s face it, blog­ging has become main­stream and while that’s a good thing in the sense that the media and cor­po­ra­tions are doing dou­ble takes, it also means that every­one and their don­key is blogging.

Most blogs are merely jour­nals, out­lets to vent frus­tra­tions or col­lect obser­va­tions about life (includ­ing that guy who cut you off last week on the cor­ner of 5th and Main) while other blogs focus on a spe­cific sub­ject mat­ter like web devel­op­ment, adver­tis­ing, cor­po­rate life and car­toons. In the past year I’ve amassed over 300 feeds from a vari­ety of sources and between Feed­de­mon and Blog­lines I can pretty much become more knowl­edgable in any­thing I wish to learn about.

You’ll find that most peo­ple are will­ing to share their ideas and by shar­ing I mean col­lab­o­ra­tion. As humans we love to gos­sip and build our egos and this is a good thing because if no one felt com­fort­able or excited about shar­ing new con­cepts then the world would be a solemn place. I couldn’t tell you the amounts of times that I’ve felt good (or great even) about receiv­ing feed­back on cer­tain arti­cles I’ve written.

It makes me want to con­tinue learn­ing about what I do best, what I’m curi­ous about and what I know I’ll never do (like being a rocket sci­en­tist or ice-cream tester) because knowl­edge is the key to suc­cess. Blog­gers are peo­ple who are will­ing to share their knowl­edge of var­i­ous top­ics and in doing so they have hopes that they’ll also receive com­men­tary and feed­back, which ulti­mately builds a community.

The com­mu­nity that has devel­oped from this site alone, the “kartooner’ites” as I call my read­ers, is impor­tant to me in more ways than I could explain. I love the feel­ing of post­ing an arti­cle and mere hours later com­ments start to col­lect like flies on honey paper. It builds my ego, yes, but it also makes me proud that I’ve man­aged to share some­thing with some­one and they got some­thing out it. I think it’s impor­tant that if you’re read­ing these sites and enjoy­ing them then you should make it a habit of leav­ing a com­ment here and there. Trust me, it’ll make a world of dif­fer­ence to the per­son who runs the site, does their research and releases their words to the world.

That said, I hope that every­one has a great hol­i­day and makes the most of it. We have so lit­tle time here and it’s best that you breath in the details because before you know it the present will become just a memory.

In other site-related news (sorry for the abrupt off topic redi­rect) the Atom feed for this site is now pow­ered by the excel­lent Feed Burner ser­vice. For those of you read­ing this site in your pre­ferred feed reader, the feed URL is now located here. With this ser­vice enabled I plan on adding a few cool fea­tures to the feed in the next few days, so if you could do me a favor and switch over that would be great.

Thanks for read­ing and now back to your reg­u­lary sched­uled lives. 

11 comments

I know the feel­ing man. I’ve been blog­ging for a bit over a year now and it’s tak­ing back­burner too.

It’s nice to have a com­mu­nity to which you con­tribute but first things first. I respect your deci­sion. Do good on your finals!

by Mike on December 14, 2004 at 12:40 pm. Reply #

Mike: I’m fin­ished with my final for Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. My pro­fes­sor gave us a few ques­tions to answer, no more than 200 words per answer which ulti­mately proved to be dif­fi­cult, moreso than if there were no restric­tion on word count.

The only other final I have left is for math and that will be pretty easy I’m think­ing as I’ve been get­ting 90–100% on every test.

by kartooner on December 14, 2004 at 12:44 pm. Reply #

I remem­ber what blog­ging burnout feels like — I’ve had like 6 or 7 incar­na­tions of a weblog of sorts since 2000, and if I weren’t that incon­sis­tent I could have eas­ily reached an audi­ence the size of Kot­tke or what­ever blogstar you may think of. But that’s not why I started doing it in the first place.

These days, it’s not much about burnout as well as not hav­ing the time I used to have to sit down and write some­thing coher­ent and worth­while from the lots of ideas I always have fly­ing on my head. I tend to be very strin­gent with myself in regards to pub­lish­ing. That, plus the fact that I have fun but no profit from my per­sonal site, makes updates appear at a snail-slow pace.

But seem­ingly I’m not alone, so what gives. ;)

by beto on December 14, 2004 at 2:18 pm. Reply #

Hope you did well! Con­grat­u­la­tions on your com­mit­ments; most peo­ple are only good at one thing. I’m glad you take the time to be a father and a stu­dent so seriously.

by max on December 15, 2004 at 12:34 am. Reply #

I remem­ber the first time I came to Kar­tooner, by way of a com­ment you had left on Robot­Johnny. I thought the con­tent was unique and inter­est­ing in a way that reminded me of hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with a friend who tells good sto­ries. I’ve learned a lot from this site, and you have been a great sup­porter (prob­a­bly the first sup­porter) of my site. I remem­ber why I was inter­ested in blog­ging when I read your posts. It was never about shar­ing what tooth­paste I use (Crest), but about telling lit­tle sto­ries from my per­spec­tive. I’m not try­ing to change the world; I’m just look­ing for a lit­tle meaning.

I think the won­der of the blo­gos­phere is the small con­nec­tions you make with other peo­ple through inter­ac­tion on their site and/or your own. I value each com­ment because it means that some­body cares enough one way or the other to share their opinion.

Know­ing a small amount about your per­sonal life and fam­ily affects the way I think about your posts, and where they are com­ing from. I get the sense that you might wake up at 3am to bail me out of jail if I knew you in the real world. I’m proud to be a reader.

Where do I get the Kar­tooner­ite t-shirt?

by Greg on December 15, 2004 at 2:46 am. Reply #

Great com­ment Greg, I couldn’t have said it bet­ter. If blog­ging is in the dic­tio­nary, this site should be high­lighted along with it, as it defines what best a blog is about. Learn­ing new things, dis­cov­er­ing a new per­son­al­ity, and becom­ing a part of a great community.

by Matt Burris on December 15, 2004 at 10:32 am. Reply #

Beto: Plus, you got to hang out with the orig­i­nal Blog­ger crew way back when. Any­how, you’re right though, it does take time to ded­i­cate one­self to blog­ging and every­one at any point in time has some­thing to say. It’s just find­ing the time to for­mu­late your thoughts, which isn’t an easy thing to do and type them out, check for incon­sis­ten­cies and spelling mis­takes, it takes a lot of time and effort.

Max: Thanks man. In your sit­u­a­tion I bet you’re proud to be a new home and dog owner, as well as a good hus­band and comic book artist.

Greg: Thanks man, I really appre­ci­ate all that you had to say. Makes me feel good that you’ve got­ten some­thing out of this site and even then some. As for reveal­ing var­i­ous aspects of my per­sonal life, I sup­pose I never thought of it the way you explained it but yeah, I think it’s good for every blog­ger or writer even to reveal small glimpses of their per­sonal lives.

In effect and as you explained so well, you begin to under­stand where the writer is com­ing from and in that sense you begin to see the whole pic­ture, not just what tooth­paste they use (Colgate).

As for the shirt, who knows? I do plan on crack­ing the whip on Sidev­ille here soon so mer­chan­dise will be rolling out soon (how soon? Again, who knows?) I’d rather not get too many hopes up until I’m com­fort­able with the material.

by kartooner on December 15, 2004 at 10:37 am. Reply #

I’m a moron. I just typed up this mes­sage and then hit some key on my key­board and lost it all, so I’ll make this one short.

I have to agree with Greg on this one. When you can make a story about sub sand­wiches sound sus­pens­ful, you’ve got my atten­tion. Just kid­ding. I can say that you’ve been blessed with an abil­ity to tell sto­ries. It’s always inter­est­ing to read your stories

Your posts always sound as if you’re speak­ing with some­one instead of to them. It’s a very charis­matic trait and prob­a­bly has a lot to do with the crowd you have here. It’s always a plea­sure to see you all’s gravatars.

by Fernando Dunn II on December 15, 2004 at 11:11 pm. Reply #

To echo Greg and Fer­nando, I’ve def­i­nitely enjoyed your posts and learned so much from your site’s lay­out and design. Thanks for your ded­i­ca­tion to the site! It inspires those of us who haven’t been at it for a long time!

by Ian on December 16, 2004 at 4:01 am. Reply #

Remem­ber these words, as spo­ken by some­one rel­a­tively famous:

“If the blog gets old, time to break the mold.”

Or, these words, from some­one even more famous:

“If you’ve got too much to do, axe the blog, we will too!”

Or, these words, which have noth­ing to do with the pre­vi­ous two:

“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, unless you turn around.”

No prob­lem — I’m here to help.

by Pauly D on December 16, 2004 at 12:17 pm. Reply #

Thanks for those words of encour­age­ment, Paul. :)

by kartooner on December 18, 2004 at 1:09 pm. Reply #

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