Oh, the irony.
May 4, 2006Blogging is, in itself, a paradox. New blogs usually arise out of fun, the want to publish thoughts in a (sometimes) orderly manner. But as the blog grows and an audience made, pressure grows. Somewhere along the line, it ceases to become about you. No, let me take that back. It becomes more about you, but less about what you first wanted. It’s not about you sharing your thoughts with the world, no…It’s building that readership. Checking the stats. Spamming.
Scratch that last one.
In a sense, you get what you want and have an audience to share your thoughts with.
But are they the thoughts you wanted to share?
As Randy K. Milholland (don’t ask me who he is, I really don’t know–he’s just got sweet quotes) once said:
It hurts to find out that what you wanted doesn’t match what you dreamed it would be.
And that, my not-so-dear readers, is what big time blogging is all about.
May 6th, 2006 @ 8:53 pm (#)
Amen. That was what I was trying to get at with my more recent post. I hate that what I’m writing isn’t what I set out to write.
If that’s what big time blogging is about, then frankly, I don’t want it.
May 6th, 2006 @ 8:59 pm (#)
I often re-write my posts on elliotswan.com to make them less “potentially offensive,” and sometimes scratch posts because I don’t think some of my readers will find them useful…I find that these past few days since the CSS Reboot where I’ve been getting tons of traffic have been specifically interesting. Definitely fun though.
I think it’s quite possible to still have your blog be about you even with a big audience, it’s just more challenging. You really have to think things through and decide what you want: To just blog for yourself, or for your readers. I think both are equally rewarding, they’re just different.
For me, elliotswan.com is my blog for other people–I started this Accidental Procrastination one a few days ago for me, and I aim to keep it that way.
I actually haven’t even officially announced this yet, I should probably do that sometime. Maybe I’ll make a design for it first though.
May 6th, 2006 @ 9:02 pm (#)
It’s a good point, but what I blog about isn’t something that’s targetted to begin with. It’s usually about education, politics or other random ramblings. And I’ve censored myself on all three counts for the sake of not offending someone. Which I think it’s good to try to not offend people as much as possible, but I think you can still say what you want to say sensitively and in such a manner that it causes people to think, not react, if you know what I mean. I haven’t posted things out of fear that people will stop reading because they disagree. And that’s hoshposh. Period. Especially for the things I blog about.
I don’t know. I have some pondering and reevaluating to do, it would seem. I’m looking forward to this blog though, especially since I’m not big on tech.
July 9th, 2006 @ 10:37 pm (#)
[…] I’ve been doing Accidental Procrastination for a couple of months now, and I have no intentions of stopping. My stats show that readership has been growing quite nicely as of late (I think I’m running into the blogging paradox already), and I’ve been having loads of fun. […]
October 20th, 2007 @ 4:15 am (#)
You think the only people who are people, Are the ones who look and think the way you do, But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, You’ll learn the things you never knew you never knew… You can own the Earth and still, All you’ll own is earth until You can paint with all the colors of the wind.