One Month In

It has been about one month since I gave into temptation and started this blog. Results this far have been mixed. Some observations:

• The early entries were tough slogging because I had no readers. Now I have a few readers, which is sometimes comforting and sometimes overwhelming. My original hope for this blog was about 100 page views per post and a core of 10 regular commenters or so. Those goals were foolish (only the most popular blogs get 10 regular commenters) and I am well short of them, but perhaps this is about the level of celebrity I can handle.

• The blog has been taking up far too much of my mental real estate. Not only has my real blog suffered, but other things in my life are losing ground as well (especially looking for work, although I am sure I would find other ways to procrastinate on that if I was not blogging).

• One unsettling thing I have discovered is that there are so many bloggers I am not reading. I thought I was following a good number of people: I have 391 feeds in my RSS reader, although several of them are not blogs and many of them are defunct. But I have taken a peek at several new blogs during the past month, and I feel pressure to subscribe to them too. But I have to limit myself, or I will spend several hours a day just reading RSS feeds instead of doing other things in my life. If I could dip in and out of blogs better, this would be less of a problem, but I have a bad habit of being a completist. I cannot do that, however. This is entertainment, not work.

• This is not a wholly new observation, but there are perfectly nice people I feel I ought to follow more closely, but whom I don’t. Not every blog is to everyone’s tastes, and that is okay. Maybe I will pay occasional visits to those blogs. But I still feel guilty.

• I am probably running short on topics. I do not know how you daily bloggers manage. I don’t particularly want to be a daily blog, but I don’t want to repeat the same five entries over and overagain either. Perhaps it is time to sign a service agreement with the Muses or the Skanks. Or perhaps it is time to drop down to one or two entries a week instead of three or four.

• I thought this blog would offer a chance for me to reinvent myself, but that is not going so well. I thought I could be witty and sassy, but it is not working. It is taking all of my self control to avoid sinking into bathos. I do not like my persona here.

• I also thought I would be more forthcoming on topics of sexuality on this blog. Mostly what I have learned is that I am such a prude that even Puritans and right-wing Evangelicals find me uptight. There is some chance I will be more salacious in future entries, but there is a bigger chance that I am going to lose my small audience for voicing some fairly unpopular views.

• Related to the above, I feel much more constrained in what I can and cannot write than I thought I would be. That is a surprise, but it ought not to be.

• It is proving difficult to decide what is appropriate blog fodder for this blog and what is appropriate for my real blog. My real blog is going to become rather dour if I reserve all the fun entries for this one.

• I am surprised at how entertaining certain entries were to compose. I am pretty happy with the Serial Blogonomy post, even though it got no response. The Cheating is a Bad Gamble entry also turned out okay.

• I am surprised by the composition of my blog commenters so far, but pleasantly surprised. You are all delightful people.

• I would still like to grow my audience, but it is clear that I am bad at this. Maybe things will continue to grow organically, or maybe not.

• I do not know how long I will continue this experiment. Ideally I would be able to enjoy the blogosphere without succumbing completely. If I continue to fail at that I may have to drop this hobby. If I am getting repetitive or feeling like blogging is a chore I should quit.