download google widgets: Widgets - A Blogger?s Life: Why Blog and When Do You Stop Blogging?

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Widgets - A Blogger?s Life: Why Blog and When Do You Stop Blogging?

Dr. Johnson’s Cat asks “So: Why Blog?”, a question that plagues many bloggers, wanna be bloggers, and wish-they-weren’t bloggers. Why do we keep on blogging when the fun drains away. And what keeps bringing us back. Googling the phrase “stop blogging” gets 171,000 hits: Ten Reasons Why I Should Stop Blogging; Should I Stop Blogging? 20 [...]

Googling the phrase “stop blogging” gets 171,000 hits: Ten Reasons Why I Should Stop Blogging; Should I Stop Blogging? 20 Questions to Ask Yourself; 29 reasons you need to stop blogging right now; Why Bloggers Stop Blogging; How to Know When to Stop Blogging; Stop Blogging and Get to Work; etc. The tract “What Everyone Should Know About Blog Depression” (Loss of pleasure in the Internet; feelings of sadness, disappointment, anger, self loathing, hopelessness, dementia; passive aggressive moaning and a steady lengthening of the interval between posts) is now three years old.

And why shouldn’t people be depressed? According to a recent study (via Jakob Nielsen via grow-a-brain) visitors to websites on the average read only 20% of the text; 28% tops. People starting blogs only to abandon them within months, or even weeks, is such a commonplace that you’re surprised this hasn’t become a a ubiquitous trope on sitcoms. Where indeed are the reality shows where the participants, instead of holding out to the last “What have we learned?” episode, instead wander off seriatim, not so much called back to real life as completely unsprung by despair.

Which of course begs the question: why blog at all?

The first comment asks if blogs have a “good until” date stamp on them - and if they should.

The author, Chris Hodge, tells a lively and beautifully written story about his own path through the blogosphere, blogging, stopping, blogging, stopping, finding a sense of renewal, and then depression again. It’s a great tale of a typical blog experience and challenges you to think about why you blog, but most of all, why you keep blogging.