Blog stopping
by tamarjacobson
Quote of the Day:
Without the buzz and energy and cross-talk of the earlier period, it’s hard to get very involved with this medium any more. Tom Shugart
The subject has come up again. The question has re-arisen:
To blog or not to blog …
Yesterday, I thought to write about my trip to New York on Friday when I visited the Dadaists and Bethesda Fountain; and when LeAnn and I stumbled upon E.E. Cummings‘ house in a quaint little side-street/place in the Village. Hmm … what a day! Full of sunshine and New Yorkers.
As my good friend, Uncle M., back in Buffalo would say: "Memories are moments that refuse to be ordinary."
But then, I said to myself, "Well, honestly. Who would care? Who pays attention?"
Ah, those synchronicity-type moments! For just as I thought that, I happened upon Tom Shugart, thinking and asking a similar question …
Yes, Tom, I think attention does matter. And while I get so much out of and enjoy writing for myself, I could do that without the feeling of responsibility and commitment that I have developed for my blog. Plus, I always remember Ronni saying that the really good bloggers are the ones who receive the attention – because they are good. So, perhaps my blog just is not good enough for attention any longer. I had an edge there for awhile and the flame has gone out. Just not passionate, humorous, or intelligent enough. The honeymoon is over and out …
Now, please let me be clear. This post is not about asking for attention. It is for me to see in black and white the reality of my personal blogging future. I am looking at that eternal/internal blogging question:
Why do I blog? Why do I blog? Why do I blog? Why do I blog?
tamarjacobson 
Gee, Tom, interesting tid-bit on Golby there …
“It’s that I consider my struggle with the question, “why do I blog?” to be some sort of private and personal issue–a unique burden thrust upon me by my own shortcomings” … there! I identify *again* with what you say!
But I don’t think it is foolishness. I think it is much like anything else in life. Philosophers have been wondering about what life is all about forever, no? So, mulling over whether to blog or not is merely one piece of that!
Thank you for getting us all thinking about this. I certainly have benefited from it!
My God, Tamar, have I not been paying attention or what? If it hadn’t been for your kind email, I probably would not have chanced upon this post and this amazing string of comments.
Pretty ironic for a guy who was mulling over the dynamic of attention and putting up a post about it. A bit embarrasing as well, I’m afraid.
My embarassment is not about being an attention-laggard. That’s just a phase into which one falls from time to time. It’s that I consider my struggle with the question, “why do I blog?” to be some sort of private and personal issue–a unique burden thrust upon me by my own shortcomings
Your post and the great comments it has elicited have shown me what nonsensical thinking this is. Thanks, Tamar, for helping me get my head back into a straighter alignment.
P.S. It was nice to see Golby–an old blogging friend out of the past– among your commenters. If he’s following your blog, apparently he’s retained a modicum of sanity, which some bloggers (not this one) have been known to question.
Hurrah! Tom sent me an e-mail and says I had better share it because until he gets to it it might be too late for his comment here …
I wrote: “Hello Tom, We are all beginning to become concerned about you. Could you give me a heads up as to how you are? I also left you a comment on yours but it did not become published.
Both Mike Golby and Frank Paynter are are also expressing concern as to your whereabouts.
With care and concern,
A blogger friend,
Tamar”
He replied: “Tamar:
I cannot thank you enough for your thoughfulness and caring. I’m accepting it as a loving kick in the butt to WAKE UP and get back in here. I’m robbing myself of a lot of pleasure by not staying current with you guys.
I submitted a comment to your wonderful string of comments. Too bad it’s so tardy. I checked my comment function to see if it’s OK, and it seems to be. Thanks again, Tamar–Tom S”
Wow! Good to hear from you, Tom. Waiting to read more here and there …
(Should be in your inbox now…)
Frank, I probably should seeing as I “expanded” on his post! Do you have his e-mail address or should I look on his blog-site for that?
Winston,
I know. The comments have been amazing. I am so thrilled to see everyone participating in this manner. Thank you so much for yours as well.
So who’s turn is it to send Shugart an email?
Tamar, pardon my tardiness. I’ve been travelling and not able to devote as much time as normal to reading. I have watched in amazement the cast of characters that showed up to comment on this post and offer their myriad tones of encouragement and endorsement. That fact alone should give you a wonderful sense of the worth of your blogging activity, and hence of yourself…
Andy,
Thanks so much for the comment and for renewing the connection. I don’t always get to drop into everyone on my blogroll as much as I used to but have not lost my connection to your blog. I think what you say about attention and connection is quite enlightening in fact. You are right about attention seeking as being thought of as negative. I have suffered from that all my life. There was a time in my career when I was presenting a lot and in the limelight in my field. I felt bewildered and anxious instead of excited and joyous about that, I remember! But yes indeed, connection is a most natural and fundamental human need and oh my goodness, blogging is a great vehicle for that. All these interesting, “real,” and heartfelt comments surely prove that!
Hello Mike!
“You get out of blogging about as much as you put into it.” And, of course, I agree with that. I suppose I get in a funk from time to time about lack of attention. So I guess it’s time for this, here blogger to wise up and become an adult … and learn to accept that I just blog because I blog!
Yes, I, too, wonder where Tom is about all this? I left a comment at his site the day I read that post but it wasn’t published. I hope he is OK.
I’m still awaiting Tom’s response to this superabundance of “buzz, energy and cross-talk.” Like me, I doubt he’d be able to add to what previous commenters have put so well, Tamar. Mind you, were I to ask myself that question today, i.e. “why do I blog?”, I’d probably have no answer at all. I blog…and that’s that. The rest boils down to consequence. Life’s kinda like that. Generally, I think the old adage applies: “You get out of blogging about as much as you put into it.”
I’m a bit late on the scene here… but this is something I’ve been pondering on and off too, Tamar. Once upon a time I was excited and enthused by the whole blogging thing, but for quite a while now, keeping going has been a real struggle.
So why do I carry on? It’s because I can’t bear to lose completely that sense of connection which blogging gives. And as Clouds says, that’s something that comes from being “real”, not from being especially clever or articulate.
There’s a world of difference between seeking attention and seeking connection, yet the two can easily be confused because they can look alike. And I suspect that although our cultural backgrounds – yours and mine – are probably very different in many ways, one thing they might have in common is an upbringing where one was taught that to seek attention – to seek to be noticed – was somehow bad. Yet to find connection is surely a most natural and fundamental human need?
And to be honest, that in part is why I’m leaving this comment – to try to renew connections that had all but died.
Gemma, thank you.
patry, do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever possessed “red patent leather shoes!” Perhaps that’s one of my problems. Yes, I love the idea that we don’t have to be “chosen” or belong to any club to blog. That is one of the great things about it.
Ah, Richard, and there you are. “Higher selfishness.” Perfect. What a great thing for you. Congrats! Good to hear from you again. I have been wondering how you are.
Hello Natalie. The blog has given me the gift of friendship and community. Plus the venue to write out and explore my inner life. I think I have started to accept Clouds’ interpretation of “ebb and flow” because no sooner do I think I want to stop blogging then I realize I have much more to say … and I also want to find out how all my blogger friends out there are doing, what they are writing about, which pictures they posted, etc…. Of course it would help if the BBC wanted to interview me too! How grand that must have been for you. But what would they talk to me about, I wonder? Why I played with dolls until I was 15? I don’t think so!
So am pretty much waiting for the tide to rise again.
Agree with Richard and the others – you never know what unexpected gifts the blogosphere will bring. Same thing happened to me recently: the BBC only noticed my blog because a blogger I didn’t know was enthused about it and pointed it out to them. Another bonus is that she and I will meet soon and undoubtedly be friends.
I left a long comment here a couple of days ago but it didn’t register and now I’ve forgotten what I wrote. Essentially it was telling you to stick to it, tamar, through highs and lows. A blog is a relationship and a creative endeavor at the same time – if we’re not enjoying it, then we have to make it enjoyable for ourselves. You are now part of some other bloggers lives as they are of yours – we’re not leaving, so don’t go!
Within the past 72 hours I’ve become the recipient of a wonderful act of altruism, a spiritual action with possible material overtones, prompted by a blogfriend’s telling someone about an old post of mine. If this is the only result of blogging for a year and a half, blogging will have been infinitely worth it. It’s almost enough to get me back online to see what other opportunities come. Call it a higher selfishness. Anyway, I’m convinced that the blogosphere is a medium for people’s suppressed goodness as much as their suppressed nastiness. People can touch each other’s lives in secret here, waving magic wands in the dark of cyberspace, their left hand not knowing what their right hand is doing.
The great thing about blogging is that you don’t have to be “chosen” to do it; you don’t have to be accepted by an editor; you don’t have to be the prom queen. You just jump in in your red patent leather shoes and say I’m here!
Keep jumping! I, for one, love your spirit.
I love to read your blog Tamarika because it feels my heart with happiness.
Danny,
What you write in your comments is of great value to me and therefore I do not feel pressured by anything you say. You always give me food for thought especially when you share your own feelings about things. It makes me so happy to know that you value my blog. Thank you so much.
Well, well, Rhea. Weclome! What a great way to meet you. And, no, you are SO not “chopped liver!” I looked at your blog site and “about me” page and am thrilled to know you are there and reading. What a great surprise.
Yes indeed, MaryB, I was in NYC and wondered if you would notice! I came strictly on the agenda of a friend so was restricted. So, am thankful you were in DC! I assure you that when I arrange it properly I will definitely stop by to meet you. I can’t wait!
Ronni,
I hope you get to answer Frank re: the lobster prices : )
But more than that I appreciated your interesting and informative comment. I especially liked how you say: “Those are all good enough reason to blog, but ultimately, it’s personal. Most of us are a mass of contradictions just muddling along day to day, some of them better than others, and not one of us ever knows when some small thing we write will have great impact on another. It happens every day all over the blogosphere.”
That spoke to my heart directly.
So many interesting comments that I hate to move onto a different post I am learning so much about how everyone feels about this and the conversation broadens my understanding of “Why do I blog? Why do I blog? Why do I blog? Why do I blog?”
I stand corrected about Ronni’s statements and apologize for the harshness of my original comment. I think I was talking to the similar voices inside my own head when I wrote that. Suffice it to say that I consider your blog of great value to me and to the blogosphere and I’d be very sad if you stopped. Is that a “good” kind of pressure or “bad”?
Hey, what am I, chopped liver!? I’m here and reading you.
Forget the blog-stuff, Tamar – are you telling me you were in New York and didn’t let me know??!! Oh, never mind – I was in Washington DC, anyway. But I did wave to you when the train stopped in Philadelphia. Sigh. You weren’t even there to “feel” it. 😉
Yes. Well, Ronni… this may not be on topic, but I’d like to know what’s up with the price of lobster? Last week in Massachusetts we discovered it was priced out of sight! Now that you’re a Mainer, can you explain that?
When I started Time Goes By, I sneaked into the blogosphere. I didn’t tell anyone at all about it and I wasn’t sure enough of myself, my voice, or even my thoughts and opinions sometimes yet, to comment on other blogs.
Frank Paynter is one of the people I’d read for a long time before beginning TGB. He and the people who comment there seemed so smart and clever and knowledgeable that I couldn’t possibly have anything to add that wouldn’t make me appear to be ignorant or worse, an ass.
I wasn’t expecting much when I started TGB. I just wanted a place to put the research and thoughts I’d been collecting about growing old and the few people who might read it would be enough to keep me on track – for myself.
Or so I thought. But it’s not possible to blog, even for a short period of time, without attracting attention. To wit:
On the day I secretly published my first blog entry, several people visited. I couldn’t imagine how they found it and it took months before I figured out it must have been the Typepad “just published” list.
The next day there were a few more. Not many, mind you, six or eight a day in the first week and month, but enough to make me track down Statcounter so I could know more about where they came from than Typepad stats provide.
So I learned right away that there is no hiding in the blogosphere. It doesn’t make any sense (why publish if you don’t want to be noticed?), but a handful of readers and one comment or two made me even more shy for awhile about putting myself out there. Why in the world would anyone – particularly strangers – care about what I had to say about aging or anything else?
I’ve learned a lot about the blogosphere since then and about myself. I care that people read my blog – part ego, but even more that their comments add so much to the conversation surrounding aging.
And I care even more than that about the friends and about small communities that grow within the larger blogosphere. Didn’t you once call them “pods”, circles of blogging friends and acquaintances that overlap one another?
Those are all good enough reason to blog, but ultimately, it’s personal. Most of us are a mass of contradictions just muddling along day to day, some of them better than others, and not one of us ever knows when some small thing we write will have great impact on another. It happens every day all over the blogosphere.
Few of us are ever going to join the top 100 bloggers and it doesn’t matter. I stand by my statement that really good bloggers get big-time attention that remains and grows over time. Read any of the Technorati top 100 and (with one exception that drives me nuts), they are excellent writers and thinkers.
But most of them were among the earliest bloggers – when they all knew one another – or have professional positions/names that attract attention or have attracted mainstream media attention for one reason or another. There are stars in every medium, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are not valuable to the readers we have.
As an example, some of the best ideas I get for TGB come not from media stars (in any medium), but from comments left on TGB, other bloggers and small-town newspapers.
I’m with you, Tamar, attention is important, but it doesn’t need to be in the thousands and millions to be satisfying.
Just look at all these thoughtful and supportive comments left here on this entry.
Late to the party, but I wanted to add how much I agree with Clouds’ comment. We are not automatons, we have our moments of reaching out and our moments of retreating and blogs reflect this. I am just beginning to grasp that giving myself the gift of these ebb times, even quite lengthy ones, without guilt is part of the whole experience.
Trust the process is another way of saying it I suppose
Each one of these comments is so interesting, and relates to various aspects of, and all the different thoughts I have been having about blogging lately. You all hit various and sundry nails on the head!
Thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to share these personal opinions, ideas, thoughts here. It expands my thinking … and feeling … as I ebb and flow down this blogging path …
In my experience, this feeling comes and goes fairly inexplicably. I’ve come to put it down to the odd and unprecedented nature of blogging which means we have little habitual context to revert to relying on when inspiration or connection are not feeling particularly strong.
And I want to say too: on Saturday I had dinner with two London bloggers I’ve met before and three, visiting from Wales and th US, whom I was meeting for the first time. They are as sweet and lovely and interesting people as I have ever met, and having encountered them through this medium is as close to miraculous as it gets. This makes me feel, when I have nothing to say and almost no one is reading anyway, that, well, I don’t know what this blogging is all about, but is has brought me so much unexpected happiness.
Well, that’s about me, not you, Tamar, but I just felt like saying it.
Much love.
Ahhh, shux. If you’ve been given the gift of expressing yourself through the written word… and you have… then why not blog? Blogs are jopurnals we share with each other. Once in a great while something we write inflames the imagination of hundreds, or even some few thousands of people. Few of us have “a beat” like Ronni and so can expect a steady and increasing stream of readers. But all of us have friends (like you and me, and Ronni, and Tom) and we can be satisfied that sharing these our thoughts and feelings in this asynchronous manner on the web is a good thing to do, better than watching TV for sure! if I don’t stop by here for a week or two, well… then I’m not caught up with your life. But I will catch up. if you don’t stop by my place for a week or two, then you’ll miss one decent rant, a cople of funny observations like “Beer, it’s cheaper than gasoline!” and some pointers to other people’s good works. I liked Clouds’ observation that all tyhings ebb and flow. My blogging does, and yours too I imagine.
I blog for me. Because it brings me pleasure. Because it is a record of my life and my thoughts. That anybody cares is just the frosting on the cake. When it stops being fun, I’ll stop blogging.
As for your blog–I just recently discovered it and would hate to see it disappear before I really got to know you!
Hi Tamar (do you prefer Tamar or Tamarika?),
All things ebb and flow – in both short and long cycles. I imagine we tend to make more of the ebb than is warranted. Maybe we also make more of the flow than we should. Lots of people give up in the ebb, not realizing it is just a half of the cycle and the flow will come back ‘round if one just stays the course.
As for those adjectives which you and others think they may not have enough of, well, I just want “real” in what I read. That’s all. Just life. Ordinary and everything else. That’s plenty good enough – just because it is human. I read blogs primarily to learn how people live, think, feel, work through things, to discover how people exist in ways of living other than my own. I enjoy hearing about even the mundane day-to-day activities. I read blogs to learn how to be human, and just to expand my understanding of people. As for attention, for giving it, well, I have my own ebbs and flows — sometimes I’m good at reaching out and acknowledging and connecting, and sometimes I’m just hiding in a hole.
Blessings to you!
Clouds
I so understand this dilemma and I was having another “why bother” moment on Friday, falling into that crazy “out of confidence” mode where I believe that the number of comments I receive on my blog is equal to the “success” of the blog and the worthiness of continuing. Hogwash. I hope she responds to this post but to my memory you’re taking that Ronni Bennett quotation wildly out of context. The implication you draw from that remark to your blog is not at all accurate. Whether you feel inspired to continue blogging is a legitimate question you have every right to ask yourself, of course, but saying “perhaps my blog just is not good enough for attention any longer” is not you talking, it’s that irritating little voice that tries to hurt you from time to time and convince you that you’re not worthy enough to live. I hope you’ll ignore that destructive voice and continue to share your experience with those who so enjoy reading your words and learning from you. I love your blog and how unique it is because it comes from YOU.
I completely disagree with Ronni. Is she saying that popular bloggers = quality? Why should blogging be any different than any other art? Like TV or books or film or music? You need to enjoy writing what comes from the heart and enjoy the comraderie of those who are like minded. If you want attention, you can always write about your sexual experiences or find a niche and write about technology. But you have to be you.