The trials, tribulations and dilemnas of a blogger.

I've noticed that many bloggers tend to be very introspective, we devote a relatively high amount of our time, or at least a high proportion of our blogging time, to looking at our own self and why we blog, why we write about what we do and why we are as we are.

I'm no different. I reckon that I spend far more time than the average fellow does on pondering about myself. Sometimes I think so much it hurts, the way your tongue hurts when you accidentally staple it to a wall. I've got a few theories on why this is, as I have on most stuff. One of my simplest ones, and probably the most accurate is this:

We have got what non bloggers would call "too much time on our hands". This whole act of writing and having a blog can be time consuming, some manage to chuck a blog into their lifestyle and not actually spend a significant amount of time on it, but most of us devote a bit of effort, energy and brain power to it. Non bloggers can be caught thinking that bloggers need to "get a life" and that we write about everyday shit because we don't have much else to do.

That may be true of some, but I've yet to read blog written by such a person. The blogs I really like to read are the ones that are written by people who have "lived a little", people who I think have gone through the mill a bit and have some depth to what they've got to say. In my own case one of the reasons I began to blog was simply because I work long hours, but have long periods in which I can be at my desk with relatively little to do. I've got a life (of sorts) and I've found out that I quite like to write about it, wholly innacurately.

The blogging thing fits in nicely with my work patterns and I can write posts at will, save them and edit them as time goes on and publish them whenever I want to. In fact, this particular post was written long before I even had a blog, sometime in the 1980s. I was just waiting for the whole concept to develop before I published these thoughts.

Also the amount of time I have means that I have lots of time to think on things. That's the theory, that people who blog are able to devote more time to self rumination than people who don't blog. We choose to write a bit on our thoughts, in this computer age we don't need to find a publisher or an editor or incur any cost. Assuming we already have access to a computer with an internet connection the world is our potential audience.

Before I stumbled across Kottu, zSri and all the Sri Lankan blogs that are out there, my daily port of call to try to keep up with happenings in Sri Lanka was the online daily newspapers. Now, if I want to know anything about the latest events I know that a blogger will have posted on it, or I can write a post asking for more information. The information I get back is usually more reliable and timely than that I can read in the papers. Surely it won't be too long before online papers, or even paper papers, are a thing of the past. Maybe tomorrow's method of news gathering will be to look up a "news" blog, compiled by any number of people rather than just journalists.

Indyana's post here prompted me to jot down these thoughts. It would appear, assuming I understood her correctly, that she has had similar thoughts to me; I started this blog with no readers, no commenters and certainly no links to and from others. That's all changed now and I've built up a few "regulars", not truckloads of them but a few.

With increasing frequency I find myself writing a post and thinking "will Darwin like this?" or "will 1truecoolguy make a comment here?" or "will Java Jones chuckle away heartily at my wit?"

It's a catch 23. Like a catch 22 but much worse. I don't want to write something that alienates or upsets a regular, I don't want to lose a fellow who comments regularly because I tell him I think he's a twat.

Many songwriters will tell you, should you decide to ask them, that some of the most commercially successful songs were written purely for the composer. But, it's also true that many huge successes were written to a formula designed for no other reason than to sell loads. There's no right and there's no wrong. I just know which camp I want to be in.

Sometimes I can't help chasing readers, chasing comments, watching the statistics and wanting more readers. But I started blogging as an experiment. It's had several unexpected and pleasant consequences; I've made some good new friends and I've taking a positive interest in learning how those proper writers what write proper write properly.

That's all going to stop, I've decided there's only one way forward for me. It's the way of artisitc integrity, or whatever you call it. I'm going to make a concerted effort to carry on writing for myself. If you like it then that's great, but if not, life goes on.

It's only a blog after all.

By the way Indyana. Isn't it about time you had another daughter?

Darwin - I hope you liked this post.