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| Bust of Janus, the god who looks forward and back, at the Vatican Photo from wikipedia (click on link for info) |
It's the second anniversary of my blog! What?! No cake?! No giveaways?! What gives?!
What gives is that I'm going through a very serious blogexistential crises. This means I'm looking at what I started out to do with this blog, what's been actually happening with this blog and, trying to decide what direction I want to take it next.
Three years ago, I had an unwieldy document on my computer: It was a list of books I had read or wanted to read; reviews of books and audiobooks; charts and recipes, photos and quotes. It also had movie commentary, links to web-sites, an archive of discussions and random bits of non-sequitur thoughts thrown in. It was more than a journal. It was like a scrape book of my brain! The really cool thing was that I could cut and paste at will, add things in whenever I wanted and pretty much do my thing. I had originally wanted to transfer the entirety of the contents to a web-site and set up very sexy UI; but very sexy is also very expensive, time & labor intensive and, runs into a series of rights issues. I was told that a blog would be my best option. And so, I settled on the rather limited structure of a blog.
Over the next couple of years I've really tried to make this work: focusing in on a specific thing (audiobook reviews), introducing features and participating in other blogs' projects; but what I have found is that my content has become rather limited, my contributions have become rather erstwhile and, quite frankly I'm not having as much fun as when I was just fooling around with my word doc.
So, I've either got to fish or cut bait, and I haven't really decided what I'm going to do yet. Looking back at my blog & twitter stats and my e-mails, I see a lot of traffic for industry related news and an almost obscene interest in a photo taken of a mushroom that looked like someone pooped a brain! But that's a far cry from value I had originally hoped to bring to the table.
On the other hand, I've had a blast getting to know other bloggers and I count a couple of them as very good friends of mine. I've immensely enjoyed the projects and adventures we've shared and I love them and everything we've shared. I feel like a jerk for that not being reason enough in and of itself for just slogging through this blogexistential crises.
But I need to stop, or at least pause. I've got some decisions to make and until then, this blog will be going on hiatus. For the month of July, at the vey least, I'm going to go do some stuff and think about stuff and when I'm done, I'll let you know what's what with respect to this blog :-)
Until, then,
Stay Cool & Keep the Faith,
Tanya
This blog shouldn't be for you and it should make you happy. If it's not doing that, I think taking the time to reconsider your path is a good idea. Know that I support you in whatever you decide.
ReplyDeleteLOL, "This Blog shouldn't be for you..." !? (I know what you meant and it's all good :-)
DeleteThis is essentially what happened with me over the last two months. I know, more or less, what I want to do now. It's just a matter of making it happen. I hope that some time away helps make things a bit clearer for you.
ReplyDeleteI would hate to see your audiobook reviews stop as you're pretty good at it. On the other hand, blogging does get boring sometimes, especially in the summer when it's more fun to be outdoors. I took a month off from my blog a while back and found myself missing it after a while. Congratulations on your blogiversary though, and I hope your blogexistential crisis can be resolved without you mounting a high tower with a rifle. :)
ReplyDeleteI hear you and have a similar feeling of, well, I started this to keep track of what I wanted to listen to, and now it's consuming a lot of time and I'm not really sure what it is. Hope all's well.
ReplyDelete