Thursday, December 2, 2010

HOW LONG WILL YOU BLOG?

I have a whirling mind.  Did you know that?  Thoughts enter in and out of my head like flashes from a camera bulb.  Some of my best thoughts happen while I am having my morning constitution. Gross but true.  I equate it to the fact that I am dispelling the old out of my body so that the new can enter into a clean area.  Fresh ideas, fresh thoughts.  And by the next day, *flush* goes the old thoughts again. I use to write poetry as a teenager and all my best poems came in the middle of the night.  I was pretty good at it too. *This is where I do some unabashed bragging so close your eyes if you are concerned about nauseam*  I won several awards and two international awards, was asked to come to the States to be presented with one of them by a pretty famous comedian and got offered a book deal to publish one of my poems when I was 17.

Now as I get older and am probably a mere 10 years off menopause, I am already finding that I am starting to become sleepless and surrounded in an abundance of my thoughts. Questions, questions, questions pop up in the middle of the night whilst I attempt to slumber away.  And then poof, I am wide awake contemplating my question, or drafting my next blog post, or being still as rhyming words enter in.

Last night, the question that popped into my head was “how long will I blog for”?  Will it bore me at some point, or *gasp*, will I bore you at some point?  Will readership fall off and I am left blogging out in cyberspace just to have my redundant thoughts reverberating somewhere out in the unknown?

I often wonder how I can keep my blog fresh, for me, so that boredom doesn’t start to seep in.

I scanned a great deal of blogs over the last 8 months since I started this crazy endeavor of mine. The oldest blog I have seen was three years old.  The rest were within the last year and half.  Makes me wonder if at some point you just burn out and shut it all down.  What’s worse is that I am already seeing on some other blogs regifting of previous posts.  I am guilty myself in fact.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I wonder if they are having difficulty coming up with worthwhile material.

So I wonder, how long will you blog?  And when will it become enough for you?

I think for me it will be when I am no longer being true to myself.  It will be that moment where I am grasping at something or anything just to post for the sake of posting. It will be a substandard version of me.

And that should be the moment when I tip my hat, take my last bow and bid adieu.

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches

20 comments:

  1. I think that writers are strange animals. Sometimes they shut a blog down and move to another site only to find out that the grass wasn't greener and come back. Or they get a stalker and shut it down. They start up somewhere else. I think people who really love to write in this format will always write in this format. Will they always keep the SAME blog? Maybe. Maybe not.

    On a totally different note, I do this thing called HERE'S TO YOU THURSDAY and I dedicated something to you today. Actually, you got two things, which is unusual, but it is just how it worked out. Hope you like them...

    Oh, and I find inspiration a lot in the shower. Apparently the bathroom is just a "hot spot."

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  2. Great question.. not one I am able to answer right now. It's hard for me to picture myself blogging in 3 years. But that's my point of view right now. In truth it's hard for me to imagine myself having my current job in 3 years too so who knows.

    I know I enjoy it now - even though it can be work and it can be time consuming.

    SD
    http://simpledudecomplexworld.blogspot.com/

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  3. when i started blogging about 10 months ago, i found several bloggers that were hilarious & amazing to me, but as time has gone by, it's like they're drifting away. like they've felt the need to constantly one-up themselves with each post so that each one seems to be better than the last, but that means they take longer & are fewer & farther between. especially the comedy writers seem to suffer from that.
    i try to keep my standards fairly low so that i hopefully won't burn out or feel like writing is more pressure than it's worth. it's a great outlet for my spinning thoughts for now & i hope i'll always have something this convenient as an outlet.

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  4. I've been blogging for just over one year and have found that I am so far away (at least in my mind) from what I started as. I look at it frequently and wonder if this will be the last time I post.
    I'd like to think that I do it for me, but it doesn't seem the same anymore. My perfectionist side will most likely make me shut it down in the near future.

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  5. By the way, I love poetry. I only wish that I could write it. Can I find any of your poetry here or someplace else?

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  6. 2 years, 7 months and 26 days I reckon should be enough for me.

    Really I have no idea how long I will enjoy this delightful distraction that is blogging. It has already lasted much longer than I ever thought it would. Perhaps it depends on the syle of the blog. Some bloggers seem to lock themselves into a particular genre while I just write about whatever the blog monster tells me to.

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  7. Thanks Robin... I will be over after to check it out... am pretty excited, cannot wait..

    And thanks Sherilin, Mynx & SD... thoughtful comments

    George...I get the perfectionist thing completely and often think about shutting it down, but I hope you don't shut yours down, I actually frequent your blog, you have some seriously profound things to say, and your comments on other blogs are very thoughtful.. As for the poetry, well it really is probably the most revealing of me, and I keep it hidden away now, too raw sometimes to share. It one thing to blog about flatulent wars, that's just being goofy, but it is another to blog about things that are so raw and scarring, so I keep them for me.. But you know, thank you for asking.

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  8. I've been blogging since March, and I enjoy it and the people I've met along the way. I never thought about when I would stop; I suppose when life undergoes a drastic change and I just don't have anymore to say. But for now, I do have a lot to blather on about, so you'll be stuck with me!

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  9. I have been blogging for 20 months and don't see an end in sight. My husband keeps saying I'll run out of things to write about, but there's just so much fodder out there, and I try not to limit myself to too narrow a theme. I seem to have fallen into 3 memes, by accident. I started passing on jokes that came to me on email on Saturdays, and then discovered that readers were looking forward to my Saturday Silliness; I started doing restaurant reviews on Sundays in My Neck of the Woods, and readers seemed to respond well to those, too. (I'm not a food critic; I couldn't tell you whether the chef used garlic or tarragon in a recipe. I just photo what hubby and I ate and whether we liked it with sometimes photos of the restaurtant). Now it seems I've fallen into another Meme. New Word Wednesdays, where I create definitions for the nonsense letters that show up in word verification. I love writing; I love reading what other people write; I'm retired and have lots of time, so I may very well blog all the way to my grave!

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  10. I actually started blogging because I want to try to be a writer after I get my Bachelour's, and knew I needed to get in the habit of writing daily. It's not always art, but at least it's a daily ritual that I hope will carry on after I get my degree, into writing books.

    My first thought when reading your question was, "When I start writing my books," but then realized that is when I will need to blog the most so that I can at least create a little of my own buzz. I don't know when I'll stop. Probably if I ever give up on my dream of being a novelist.

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  11. Awesome question! I, like Simple Dude, can't answer it right now. This is my first year of blogging and it hasn't diminished for me. My excitement and enthusiasm to share in this form is just as high as it was when I started. It's one of my highlights of the day. Reading and writing. So I can't say how long I'll blog...but I can tell you that I think I love it more now than I did even when I first started!

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  12. Wow!!!!!! some great answers... I love them all!

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  13. I really don't see an end in sight for me. I am sure there will be. But, in a way I'd let myself down if I did quit. Just because I really hate quitting anything. It's like giving up and I am not good at that. I do have a gardening blog but that is just mostly article links and nothing to write in the winter. So, that doesn't get updated much but it's there.
    I'll always have new recipes to post and I will always have weird crap going through my head that I can write about.

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  14. You always make me think, even when I'm laughing with you:) I'm on hiatus, as I've run out of energy after having Bronchitis and sewing till I'm nearly exhausted. Don't quit, you'll never run out of things to talk about with us!

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  15. I suppose I will stop blogging when I lose that "itch" to blog. I don't see that happening anytime soon though. I'm a writer, and so I write.

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  16. Oops! I meant to add, I'm a night owl, always have been. And at night, when I was younger, I would sometimes write (stories or poetry) until the morning light shined through my window. And my mind is constantly noisy! Thoughts and ideas causing havoc! What you wrote, reminded me of that. -Good job! lol

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  17. I will write for as long as I feel that I have something to say, and since the topic of my blog is travelling and inter-cultural exchanges, for as long as I travel and I feel moved and touched in some way by what I experience. I don't have a regular schedule of posting, and I guess that helps not to feel overwhelmed.

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  18. Great question! I've wondered this often. As you can tell, I post but only a few times a month. However, since I've been posting poems it's been more frequent. Double that. ;) I think it deals with posting what you love; what comes from your heart and what you're passionate about. I know it's been that way for me the last few posts. Our thoughts flow more easily onto paper when we're enjoying what we're writing about. Well, I find this true, anyway. :)

    Btw, would you be willing to share some of your poetry? I'd LOVE to read them! :)

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  19. I think if you love to write it should never end! I think if you write/blog for yourself and your thoughts then it should never end! I love to blog, there are days that I have no idea what to write and there are days that I have so much my fingers can't type all of it! I love to blog and stumble upon it because my sister blogs, we are just bloggers!

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  20. Bloggy love at my place Tracy. Pop in sometime

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