I’ve been blogging for a long time now. I started in 2002. I feel rather ancient now that it is 2009.
7 years.
Yikes.
And I am surprised I am still blogging. I thought I would have run out of things to say, write, have an opinion about. But it shows that I have a lot to say!
A friend pulled the plug on one of her blogs recently.
I’m not surprised really.
As I emailed her, I said I understood perfectly the idea of ‘killing’ one’s blog. It’s not that we run out of things to write about.
It’s something deeper and far more strange.
When I started to blog, it was just my online journal. It was therapy without paying for a shrink. I could unload all my thoughts and feel better immediately. I could get on with life once my issues were on the blog. I could rant and rave and get pissed and peeved and shout in blogosphere where no one could hear me.
Or so I thought.
The thing with blogging is, at some point, one starts attracting readers/visitors/strangers/people who google something and find your posts.
They read, like what they read, and bookmark your blog and come back again. They leave comments, become your friends. They email you and they start having a relationship with you – this connection is a friendship. If they come to Penang, we make a date to meet and we hit it off once we’ve chatted over lunch or dinner. They add my blog to their blogroll. We are now blog pals.
And soon, they become fans. Huge ones. They visit your blog daily. They keep count on the times you’ve forgotten to write! They remember where you ate at, what you did on your holiday, who you bitched about.
That’s when the pressure sets in. The pressure to keep blogging even though sometimes all you want to do is switch it off and get on with your regular life. (Of course, if one does it for the money, that’s a completely different story. But as you know, my blog has none of those.)
So I get it completely when Lydia says she is focusing on one blog and leaving the other. It’s far easier this way.
At times I wonder if I would say goodbye on this blog too. Maybe one day I would. Once I have nothing to say, nothing to blog about, then I would really consider taking Mayakirana off the world wide web.
Do you have a blog? Have you ever considered NOT blogging in the future? Or ending the blog in some strange way? Enlighten me! 😉
Much the same like you, I started to my blog in ’04 as a personal journal. I still have a good laugh reading my first coupla posts. Along the way, I have made many new friends..met a cat lover (you) and like you I have added them to my blog roll.
I guess one day, I to shall stop posting…but till that day comes, I shall continue to ‘stalk’ your blog and give you an earful should you neglect your posts 😛
BTW, we have a new cat and we named him Rooney!
UnkaLeong! You’re one of my earliest blog pals online. And I still love popping over to your blog and finding out about your life. In those days, it was BKK and now you are back in KL. And still with cats. We still have the same cat, Margaret. She’s turning into a real fatty now. I call her Margaret Montokong Mustafa aka Tuna Fish (she’s as round as a big tuna). Your stalking is appreciated! I guess we all ‘grow’ as we grow our blogs. When are you coming to Penang? Come with my good pal, Ah Keat who says I can’t speak Mandarin properly (the Putonghua that he is so used to when he was in Shenzhen!)
I make up stories in my blog and I don’t have pressure to write because I don’t have many people reading my blog. I like.
Hi Langkau – I like your style. I’d like to be able to write like no one reads. But you know, it’s probably self pressure. My friends, online and offline, stalk me on the blog, catch up with me on the blog, even have conversations among themselves on my blog. I like to write about my everyday life but at times, too many things happen in a day! Anyway, thanks for your kind comment. I shall keep that in mind. Write like no one’s reading.