On this post, an anonymous commenter asked me "why do you not post daily?" Well, that's a good question and it deserves an answer. There are a number of
Some days, after having spent quite a bit of time reading through all the space blogs, I find that all those other space geeks have already said what I wanted to say. It's a little disheartening to come up with a great topic and then find that 20 other people who share my same reader market have already written what I wanted to say, but did it better.
Sometimes, rather than blogging myself, I will just leave comments on a whole bunch of other blogs. By the time I've left a comment on Bad Astronomy and Comics Curmudgeon and Transterrestrial Musings and Cosmic Conservative and Selenian Boondocks and small dead animals and Angry in the Great White North and Betsy's Page and Lone Pony and Classical Values and Posthuman Blues and on and on and on and on... well, by the time I've written comments on all those blogs, I've said pretty much everything I've wanted to say for the day, and writing a blog post on top of that would be redundant all over again a second time.
Some days, real life interferes and I just don't get a chance to even get on the computer, much less write a blog post. I might be on the road, or just really busy at work.
And some days, I get really lazy and would just much rather play video games. Generally if I have spent all day working on programming or on the lathe or mill, I just don't feel like writing anything on the blog, so I start up Mechwarrior or Age of Empires and just lose myself.
How about the rest of you? For those of you who have blogs, but don't blog every day, what excuses do you use to explain that? Leave them in the comments.
Update: When I wrote this earlier, I forgot one major reason why I don't write every day. Sometimes, I have a Big Idea pending, and I take several days to collect my thoughts on the idea. The gaps over the last couple of weeks are mainly due to precisely this reason. I have what looks like it is going to be a series of three and perhaps four blog posts - about environmentalism, conservationism, and space - pending, and I want to get all my ideas in order before I put them out there for the world to see.
5 comments:
Hi Ed. I'll give the perspective from the other side, as someone who tries to blog every day, and mostly succeeds.
I have a list of topics that I try to keep populated ahead of time. I write some of them in advance, so I also have some completed posts just waiting to be posted... and then others that I have to write, but that I have topics (and maybe some notes) for.
That way, if I haven't something timely to post for that day, I might have something semi-timely, which could be posted any time this week, say. And if not that, then I have some general, non-timely (dare I say "timeless"?) stuff that can be posted whenever.
I generally keep ahead of things that way, so it's not so hard to make sure I get something out there (and generally something of some interest, not just a lame "I had to post something, so here's something, la-la-la").
That even works when I'm going to be away from good Internet access. If I anticipate that, I can put them up in advance, tell Blogger to set the date/time to when I intend to post them, and save them as drafts. At or around the desired time, I use my BlackBerry to edit the item and publish it. Et voilà.
It requires some significant effort and motivation, but once I get it rolling it works. I just have to make sure I keep ahead of it, so I don't wind up using up all my advance topics and then hit a dry spell.
I haven't had to talk about the cat yet.
P.S.
All that said, I don't see any reason one needs to blog "every day". That's the goal I set for myself, but it's not the only answer. I think the best thing is to blog "regularly", and to define for oneself what that means. Maybe it's thrice a day, maybe it's thrice a week. And one shouldn't feel an obligation to exceed that, if one's set a reasonable interval as a goal.
I do think that blogging at least once a week is good for keeping readership going. Much less frequently than that will get people ignoring the blog. But in any case, frequency goals are individual things.
I agree with barry about being regular - if that's daily ok; if not, that's ok.
As you mention, it's a lot of work to keep up with reading other bloggers. As the list grows, I see myself not visiting as often as I have in the past.
many write about blogging, gapingvoid's thoughts are worth a read
"Some days, real life interferes...
And some days, I get really lazy...."
EXACTLY! "say no more!"
some days, a girl aint got much to say. i try really hard not to sit around listing my daily activities like a self-important twit. also i try really hard not to act like the crap i have to say is some kind of public service or homework assignment. no good taking oneself so seriously. plus i got no inter-net at home. boo de hoo hoo. I forgive you, Ed. You never had to explain yourself to begin with ;D
i wanna know how this thing always knows i'm callie even though i post from one of a jillion computers at school.
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