Blogging on

I admire those who retain a sensible perspective on blogging. By that I mean the bloggers who post when they have something to say and otherwise live ordinary lives that do not depend upon the blog. How wonderful it must be to have no concern over whether the blog is read or not, to care less about statistics, to post without even a thought of whether you last posted yesterday or a month ago. What freedom that must be!
The rest of us are slaves. Oh, we can explain that there is a purpose behind what we do, that the blog serves us in the achievement of some high-minded goal, that it is merely the means to an end. But the fact is that we become slaves to the blog. To blog with a purpose implies that we intend to reach others, for whatever reason. And that means we have to be concerned with traffic, to know that others are reading and that we become more effective in drawing return visits to the blog. So we become interested in statistics, beginning perhaps with a hit counter but soon desiring more details. Then we begin to learn how to ensure that the numbers continue to mount: post regularly, know your audience and deliver what they want, make the blog attractive and easy to navigate. All these are the elementary things that add up to blog success.
But we hunger for more and so, eventually and inevitably, we head for the traffic exchanges. Now the pressure really increases. Suddenly the blog is being viewed by hundreds and we have to think about how to capture some of those fleeting visitors, how to turn them from browsers into regulars. The blog has won and we have become its slaves.
This comes from someone else infected with the blogging virus. I can fully understand what he is saying. I started my own journal whilst running a forum that prospered and died as I had found it an outlet for things I wished to say but was not sure how to find someone to listen. It seemed better than haunting the neighbourhood ranting into space or sitting next to nice people on a bus and engaging them in idiotic conversation. Anyway, I lacked the hair as required to produce that electric-shock look. Now I have progressed to the stage where I want to add to the experience of muttering into the void by dressing my efforts in finer clothes. Not, I hope the Emperors New Clothes. There is a very interesting and finely-produced blog that I follow (and recommend to you also) and the Keeper of That Blog made an offer to do a bespoke page for a ridiculously small amount of coin. I took this up. It entailed joining PayPal which is a bit scary. I worry that I might find myself bidding on eBay for things like Japanese teenagers' knickers or Destroy It Yourself projects of a dubious provenance. I hope my brief to Gemmak was right. Given that she produces pages which change two or three times a day - does she write them in PowerPoint I wonder? - she will certainly come up with the goods. I wait with bated breath.