Judging by the activity (or lack thereof) on my Google Reader list of blogs, there seems to be so many people hurting lately. Several bloggers I follow have expressed that they are taking a break or pondering shutting down their blogs. Is it a seasonal thing? I have read somewhere that the holiday season is a time of depression for many. Is it a blogging lifecycle trend, is it normal? Lots of people open blogs and never go beyond one post. Others keep going, but stop updating after a while. Still others are a flurry of activity and then disappear overnight. I wonder if there are any seasonal patters to this phenomenom. Is it constant throughout the year or do we get flare-ups at specific times of the year?
I would like to know more about trends in personal blogging, but I do not know if there is anything out there measuring non-professional blog trends. Does anybody know?
In the meantime, to all the bloggers I follow who are hurting, I hope things get better soon.
Monday, November 12, 2007
I'm sorry you are sad
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G'day from Australia,
ReplyDeleteCame here from Corey's blog, and I like what I see. Great attitude to life and I admire the way you encourage others.
Bless you
David
Hey there! I am still to new to blogging to answer your question. But, I plan to keep writing until I can't. I might slack some days because I am sick but, otherwise...
ReplyDeleteYou have been tagged by me to write 7 random things about yourself, if you like. My 7 is posted at www.shadesofmj.blogspot.com if you are interested in taking a look. If you participate, please link back to Poefiti. Thanks.
Have a nice night.
Hi Ingrid - thanks for the good thoughts! I'm guessing all of the things you mention play into it. For me at the moment, it is being in a place of physical and emotional exhaustion. Each time I think I'm getting to a place of calm, one more thing happens. I get tired of blogging so much negativity, and I know that it brings readers down too. So I'm gonna chill a little bit until I can regain perspective. I won't be away for long though, I miss it too much!
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with some sadness? Happiness isn't something to be found. Sadness is a big part of life that we must embrace to fully understand what is going on.
ReplyDeletePeople are fairly consistent on average. Most quit whatever they do whether that is a job, a book, or a blog. The blog phenomenon is a lot like the lottery phenomenon.
Give a person a lot of money who doesn't know how to manage it and bad things happen. Give a person a large audience that has trouble dealing with the people around him/her, and bad things happen. Blogging can be dangerous if the blogger doesn't understand the medium or genre.
From what I remember of a friend's research on blogging, he found there wasn't yet very much information out there from a linguistics standpoint on blogging. I think a lot of research is starting up now or in the midst now, which means we will see a lot of conflicting results for a decade or so to come while researchers argue about data.
Greg, I would say sadness isn't wrong or right. It just is. Some people experience it more than others, due to the circumstances of their life or their brain chemistry. Sometimes people can be sad without there being a clear reason why.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that it is a crucial, even necessary, part of life, I still feel for those bloggers in my circle who have been sad lately. I don't like it when others suffer.
As for statistics, I was looking at some Technorati stuff last night. I think that if I were to dig deeper into the charts, I could make sense of them, but I wish there was more, and more in depth research.
Ingrid, your best bet would be a local university. Start with linguistic professors. Corpus linguistics would be the most likely area to start gathering data on blogs, so you might try any journals that have corpus linguistics articles.
ReplyDeleteSuffering is a state of mind which could occur for any situation, even those that produce happiness in others. Worrying about other people's states of mind makes no sense because that only creates more suffering, vicarious suffering. Focus should be on the specific actions that are causing these states of mind. But when this happens, in most cases the actions will be discovered to be trivial.
Life is too short to worry about states of mind when they can be changed so easy.
Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into that. Blogging trends is something that interests me greatly.
ReplyDeleteI can't really say that I am worrying about my fellow bloggers state of mind. But I certainly sympathize with them, having been there myself.
Sometimes, even when we are doing the right thing and taking the right steps, we still have to deal with emotional turmoil. There is no growing without a modicum of pain. When I see someone expressing that pain, I like to reach out because we all can benefit from some support, even something as intagible as a comment on a blog.
I like your blog entry from today, by the way. I can see a certain relation between that post and your comments on this blog.
Pain is what reminds us that we are alive. Taking that away from someone takes meaning away from their life. The moments when we live despite the pain are what we cherish. There is something to envy in pain because it intensifies pleasure, even defines it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is a seasonal thing -- I've certainly been feeling blah about my blog lately.
ReplyDelete