Let me be honest, I’m not your typical, words free flowing “out of the box” blogger. By that I mean I always find it difficult to pull topics of interest out of that proverbial hat and most times I just write according to my gut feeling on something that I feel might be important. However, due to this level of spontaenity, I’m often second guessing myself to the point where most posts (or articles) that I write end up on the cutting room floor.
The reason for this is that 99.9% of the time I convince myself that whatever I had to say has been said numerous amounts of times in one form or another. For example, the other day I wanted to write about what I called “The Yin and Yang of Pastries”, wherein I’d rant about the immediate gluttony as a result of Krispy Kremes making their way into office environments.
After getting about halfway into the post I highlighted the bulk of it and promptly hit the Delete key. Whether I knew it or not at the time I had convinced myself that noone in their right mind would be interested in reading about how I believe donuts are a leading factor to gluttonous office workers.
Along these lines of thought, Keith just wrote about what he’s learned from blogging for the past 3 years. To summarize; blogging takes time, effort and in the scope of things it’s wonderfully rewarding. I couldn’t agree more, however, in the past 2 or 3 years since I decided to give this blogging thing a try I’ve realized that receiving feedback on posts and building a community of regular readers is not only rewarding in the sense that “Hey, people like reading what I have to say”, but also it adds a layer of meaning to what would otherwise be equivalent to having a conversation with a brick wall, or writing in a diary that gets shoved into the corner of drawer that’s never opened.
Blogging is certainly not a “lock and key”, all eyes diverted kind of activity. In most cases, the blogger wishes to share information with whomever seems interested and the feedback is what extends the thought, idea, observation, tutorial or lesson into something with more impact and substance that far exceeds anyone’s expectations.
Yet, there’s also a deeper truth here that what lies on the surface level. There are those who can keep a consistent schedule of posts and there are those, like me, who post irregularly. Is there a right or wrong to the amount of posts that should be written on a monthly, weekly or daily basis? Should an individual write only when something needs to be said, or should a blog be a freeflowing medium wherein the blogger posts whatever comes to their head?
At one point I believed that a blog should in its most concrete form be a constantly updated journal, but in recent years other things in my life have taken priority. Even then I almost feel that I need to write about something, for fear that whomever keeps my feed around is waiting for fresh content. Yet, I don’t want to lock myself down to only pleasing my readers when in fact this site was started as a personal project to fuel my love for writing and my knack for observing the lighter and darker aspects of life.
Either people are anxious to see fresh content or I’m just reading into it, either way, I’ve been passed a book baton by