Blogging about blogging

Despite the fact that thousands of new blogs are created each day, it feels to me like my own little universe of blogginess is diminishing. I have bookmarked my favorites to check in on periodically and I keep adding new ones, but I am noticing a trend toward fewer and fewer posts and, disconcertingly, sometimes blogs are just disappearing.

On a couple of occasions I have located the blogs of former colleagues and/or friends, by doing a Google search in a fit of wondering “whatever happened to good-old so and so?”
One night I was reading through the blog of a former co-worker who moved away and it suddenly vanished before my eyes. I clicked to the next archived entry and got that “not found” page. I clicked back to where I had been and it was gone, replaced by “not found”. Apparently at the very moment I was reading, she was making the decision to pull the plug on her blog. Or, creepily, I wondered if she, sitting at her computer thousands of miles away, had somehow divined that I was there reading her private thoughts and had quickly snatched them away. That is something to contemplate. I did feel like a voyeuer, and a little guilty. That same feeling compelled me to email another former colleague to tell him I had found his blog and read it. He replied that he was glad to have another reader and inquired about my life and family, but then he stopped posting, finally coming back with a short entry saying he was trying to decide whether to continue writing his blog or not. I hope it wasn't something I said!

A couple of the art quilt blogs I used to read have gone. I haven’t removed them from my list yet and check in occasionally in the vain hope that they have changed their minds and come back. Others now post so infrequently that it’s hard to maintain much interest in what they are doing.

I have been at this for 8 months now and my posts are not as frequent as they were early on, but I still feel like I have things to say. Maybe at some point I will burn out and fade away as well. Meanwhile, I have some favorites that I continue to read and enjoy. Gerrie and June are consistent and interesting and fun. Deborah and her young family and Deborah’s artwork are always great to read about. Sandy’s quirky links and clever commentary keep me coming back. Dad Gone Mad just cracks me up. And, of course, there are many more. I have to admit that there are a couple of blogs that I read just because they are so annoying—how perverse is that?

And now, just because I am fundamentally opposed to blog entries that have no photos, here is the scene outside my window that calls to me as I work away on my computer today. Ray hung the hammock last weekend. That is the official declaration of summer at our house. Now, if I can get up the gumption to make some iced tea—the hammock, a good book and a tall glass of said tea, all rattly with ice cubes, is just about the perfect combination for a lazy afternoon.