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! 😉