It’s Saturday night as I write this, late, very late, with my Jack Russell Brewing Company clear glass mug filled with White Zinfandel. Sorry for the horrifying conflict but that’s my nature.
At this point I’ve backed up a good seven posts ahead of today with topics I can’t wait to address. Nevertheless, I write them early at the risk of their freshness being spoiled by the next day’s news. With a blog, if you’re like me, you certainly begin to appreciate the pressure created with your miniscule attempts to keep your bit piece of the Blogosphere current, relevant and timely. But, yea, here’s the rub that I expect you encounter along with me:
I actually have a job. I do my best to keep my blog timely. But with few exceptions I realize I’ll likely not be breaking any major news upon my site. I simply do not possess the time, what with the realities of work, Life, my wife, my family, various obligations and the variables that I cannot ever remotely anticipate.
Some bloggers make multiple posts daily. God bless them; perhaps that’s their only job. I myself am challenged to make a single post per day. At this point, I try to post my next day’s entry no later than 7 or 8 pm the previous day. I work on Pacific Daylight Time, because I live high in Fornicalia’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. Recognizing this, and accounting for the three-hour difference in coasts, and knowing that some of my readers start their day three hours AHEAD of me, it’s tough to make my posts nationally relevant. It’s like I’m perenially fighting the time differential Power Curve.
And so it is with national news. If I, a little winky blogger, am struggling with the factor of relevancy, then all the various applicable news agencies are stuck (but much worse) in the same predicament.
Do you find yourself challenged to make daily posts?
And further (or perhaps you’ve not considered this), do you vet your bloglinks as I do? I must admit, I am finding myself continuously challenged with the vetting of my Usual Suspects list. Some of the persons I’ve included in The Usual Suspects have turned out to be infrequent posters. Do I eliminate them because they do not adhere to the schedule I’ve held for myself? What do my readers want? Daily or frequent updates? This is indeed a dilemma. A number of blogs on the U.S. list publish infrequently — or sometimes, now, once every couple of months. Can I afford this inactivity? Is it time to eradicate or clear my Usual Suspects list due to low posting? I am thinking so. With my hectic lifestyle I still manage to upload a daily post. Why should my intimate blogroll be any different?
I am thinking, these days: no. After three years of very slow development, a constant and steady pace, consistency, dependability, I am finally into the Marauding Marsupial and Large Mammal borders. I have guided and nurtured and attempted to portray to my readers that I am definitely in this game for the long run. Most creators, statistics show, abandon their blogs after no more than a month’s presence on the internet. And this, I am proud to say, DESPITE the fact that I am a complete HTML idiot; that is to say, I adopted a Blogger template and, with a few exceptions (thanks to Bush and TF!) it remains relatively unchanged to this day.
In terms of blogs, I am a Throwback. I am primeval, a Cretaceous kind of blog.
There are SO many things I’d like to do with my blog. I’d like to have a different header every week — a different photograph. I’d like to make my blog wider, so that it could accommodate more words per line, and photographs could likewise be wider and larger.
I’d like the portions to the left and to the right of the text of my blog be available for various blogrolls, ads, photos, information, etc.
I’d like my blog to, generally, look more professional and to be more fluctuous — that is to say, subject to frequent updates, physical changes, new looks, etc.
But, because I am in fact the ORIGINAL HTML idiot, that will likely not occur this year. I, however, hope to rectify those problems next year. Whereas BlogWorldExpo occurred in Las Vegas this year, I hope to locate its destination next year and actually attend.
I’d like to update the general look of my blog. And I’d like to make available a podcast of the former week’s news on my blog, narrated in stellar form by myself in my native dialect.
Ah yes. And I’d also like to win the lottery.
One thing I’d wish to point out: do all my readers realize that I live on a dial-up account? When various blogs post videos or podcasts or active GIFs, etc., do you realize that I cannot generally see your videos? I cannot generally even access your high-res posts?
Such is life in The High Mountains. On a good day my world = 54.6 kbps.
Bottom line: I am still literally amazed at the amount of readers I have for the primeval blog I portray to the world — I have 3,053 hits on my profile. But if you wonder: “Why is it that this guy’s blog is so visually boring?” — well, at least, now you know.
Maybe next year.
Or not.
BZ
As you know I don’t need to be at the office everyday or every week or every month, I spend my time mostly at home. I do however take many phone calls daily. I’m up at 3AM or 4AM talking to people all over the world and in between I blog.
Many people say how do you spend so much time on blogs? Well, I can be talking to England, China, or any country in South America and while I’m talking I’m also reading TexasFred or you. It’s my Get-Away and I like it.
I don’t post everyday but sometimes I post 4 times a day, it just works out that way.
I enjoy your blog just the way it is, change is good but not needed. Keep up the great posts and the great stories.
But in terms of consistency, I suspect that most persons want to read at least a new post per day. Minimum. That is the challenge that I have set up for myself.
BZ
New daily post are great and if you can do it fine. I enjoy reading comments also.
I enjoy reading others blogs and commenting more than I enjoy posting. Posting to me lets me look at my life and what I’ve done, I do enjoy that. It brings back so many great memories, Life, Travels, Family and Friends.
I’m setting here right now reading blogs I enjoy, answering emails and whatever.
There’s a fire in the fireplace, my wife is in bed watching TV or on the phone, life is good. We’re safe, warm and content. I’m having a Ice-Pick and my mom just called.
Blog away!!!!!!!!!!!!
You know, Ranando, the periphery is every bit as valuable as the interior blog itself. I just guess that my wish for this year and next would be that of DSL or optical cable or whatever.
Because dial-up, quite frankly, sucks the intimate most.
BZ
I know I complain about my satellite broadband, but it’s MUCH better than dial-up.
You should look into wildblue.net (com?) and see if they cover you.
I was having some FAP (bandwith problems) and was talking to the company who installed my system and he said wildblue (DISH network uses them) is about the best all around satellite system around.
Better than the redheaded babe is selling.
If you’re using Microsoft operating system and want to speed things up. Go to your Start button and click on Run, type in “msconfig” and click on “Startup.” There you will find all the programs that startup when you turn on your computer. Un-click all the ones you don’t need and re-start. You’ll be amazed on how this will speed your computer up, even for DSL.
Ranando: YOU ROCK! Thanks! I’ve been wanting to know how to do that for some time! I’m doin’ that RIGHT now!!
BZ
I tend to think the way ones blog looks doesn’t mean anything, it is the content.
I too have a hard time posting every day, especially lately, but i love it more now than I did a long time ago when I was posting every day. The stress was too much because, as you, I have a busy life.
I think when one enjoys writing it is hard to cease doing it.
Reality and real needs trump blogging time.
There are days I have nothing to say or don’t feel like saying anything, or just don’t have the time.
I love to blog but I have other responsibilities and priorities. Not blogging daily is no sin.
What is my blog posting rate? Miniscule per day. But then I don’t write on daily topics or much on current events, either. I actually don’t know of anyone who writes on the topics I do write on or in a similar style… it is an ancient style and more akin to my technical writing than anything else.
I don’t share much of my life, and that is intentional: it is private and my concern. Events have been negatively impacting me here across the board and so my ability to concentrate to actually get a post out is limited to a short window in the morning and sometimes later, but that is not to be counted on.
I don’t pre-write: there is a time for me to write, a time to read and a time to digest things mentally and that loop is much larger now than it was four years ago… I write because I am not well enough to work and it serves an internal need to ensure that the few good ideas I have are communicated outwards. There are a very few searches on major search engines that will only turn up my posts and anyone who types in those searches, I think, needs those posts.
I have been told that my posts are the hardest things to read that folks run across, male and female. I am sorry for that, but my ability to explain is predicated on many things and without those things the explaining falls short. Nor does my thinking organize around outlines or external structures normally seen in text media. Those formats are on deductive and inductive styles of thought, while mine is synthetic in formulation: more pinball machine than step wise progress on a topic.
I have gained audience and, truthfully, I feel sorry for same: there are far better, liquid and precise writers than myself. I cannot explain how an idea that takes 3 or so seconds to come together works… I spend thousands of words to give that synthesis some flesh, but the *how* of it is never apparent. The long research pieces are just that, and folks get all of it that I can reasonably assemble and give it some coherence.
Finally, I hate repeating myself without need. When I do such, I have taken a different approach to the topic and hope to give it better structure from that… it can take awhile, but that learning process is fascinating to me and often a simple change in emphasis on how ideas play out changes everything. And the very few things that do outrage me, I try to put the venom under control and harness the disdain… as I decry the venom that pours into our National bloodstream, I have no place in adding to it.
These things do not yield daily posts. But then you will find nothing else like them quickly or easily anywhere else, either.