A guide for the overwhelmed part 3 – blogging is dead, long live the blog

I just read Alan Levine’s latest post about quitting blogging. Well, he’s not actually quitting blogging – he’s going to quit blogging about blogging, although he did blog that he’s not going to blog about blogging. It’s making my head hurt in a manner reminiscent of the “Small is tall” video.

I include the video just in case you find the rest of the post kind of boring, at least you’ll have that to make you glad you read this. Thanks for reading this, by the way.

But I digress.

I understand Alan’s feeling completely, especially the frustration with the feeling that one ought to be blogging. Not just blogging, but analyzing/discussing/reflecting upon blogging until one is absorbed into the black hole of recursive, self-reflective blogging. (And I realize that I’m doing just that right now, but I give myself permission to be a hypocrit). He sums up the essence of his frustration quite succinctly: “What I quit is the ***** idea I ought to blog, and hoisting the flag of I blog when I fracking well feel like it. “

I’ve written before about the needless feeling of panic for not keeping up with all the stuff to read online. I think the same goes with the sense of needing to blog. It’s getting harder to find reasons to blog, at least for me, but I think that’s a Good Thing™. The web has changed a lot since I started blogging back olden days. Most of my writing has disappeared into the cloud of ephemera that is the web, although thanks to the Internet Archive, I did find the start of my blogging from back in 2003. Hands up if you were reading me back then – I’ll see if I can e-mail you a prize.

That doesn’t seem like too long ago but in web years, that’s a few generations. My early writing seemed to be all over the place (eventually tending to a lot of ed-tech kinds of things), but looking back I notice that a lot of things that I posted then I wouldn’t bother to post now. At the time, a blog was the only way to share a lot of the stuff I was sharing back then (even back then, the nascent blogosphere was about sharing). In the interim so many tools have been developed that give me a plethora of ways to share. I can share interesting things I’m reading through my delicious feed. I can give short messages about what’s happening in my life by using twitter. I share information about what’s happening with my kids or other parts of my life visually via flickr. Blogging was a way to share my life. I still do that but I now have some better tools so I don’t blog as much.

I’ve also had other priorities develop since that time. I finished my M.Ed. so I’m not writing about educational technology as much as I used to, although I do share ideas through like podcasting with the EdTech Posse. I’ve also been involved with online course development, both for my school and with Alec Couros for his now-legendary EC & I 831 class, so that’s been another avenue for keeping my ed-tech chops up to date but kept me busy at the expense of some blogging. The family has grown and the kids are a bigger priority (and tire me out so much that I usually can’t stay up so late to write). I’ve also changed anti-seizure medication and the new meds, although not clouding my brain the way it was on the previous medication, seems to give me the attention span and memory of a sparrow – not very conducive to blogging. Twitter hasn’t helped with this either.

But again, I digress. See what I mean about the attention span thing?

I can share and establish my online presence in so many ways, the blog is not needed as an outlet for them anymore. I don’t need to share links, short messages about my life or pictures of my kids. What does that leave? I see that there are two things left over – memes, and Really Big Ideas™. The memes are a good exercise in sharing within a blogging community, although those too are not as necessary for that function anymore. The other communication left is Really Big Ideas™. I’ve left more of my fair share of my screed on the interwebs over the past 6 years. Every once in a while, I get a nagging feeling that I should have some Really Big Ideas™ to write about but sadly this feeling is not accompanied by any actual Really Big Ideas™ (see aforementioned change in priorities for why this might be). It’s tough after having been a semi-productive and semi-coherent writer to realize that I don’t have too much that I think is worth writing about.

So here’s my advice, mainly to myself but also to anyone else who might have that nagging feeling. If you feel you ought to be writing in your blog but you don’t actually have anything to write about, move away from the computer. Go for a walk. Talk to people that are geographically close to you. Be with your family. Eat a good meal. Go out and feel the warmth of the day-star (it’s not just a myth after all – who knew?). The worst thing to do, for me anyway, is to read other blogs especially from people who are really good writers. Although I may enjoy reading them, I always end up thinking “Wow – she’s a great writer. I should write something that great.” – the urge to communicate, without actually having anything to say. I think that my blog becomes a better venue for me, and hopefully a better read for anyone who does enjoy this sort of thing, if I stop blogging and just use this as a place to write.

And yeah, I know this turned into a long post about blogging. Sorry about that. And Alan, I give you full permission to smack me in the face if we ever meet up in the real world.