What happens when someone stops feeding their blog and it dies, much like a Tamagotchi from the 1980’s?
Perhaps it’s ghost stays online forever, particularly if it’s on the old Blogger or Blogspot platform. Or some are eaten by another blog, new ideas and new ventures, and some, those whose parent no longer want to pay the cost of hosting their baby, euthanize it quickly and painlessly, except for those who miss it.
Below is the list of blogs I have bookmarked over the years.
Many of these are now ghosts. Some are dead. The death of some make me sad, such as You Can’t Call It It. This blog had best collection of baby names I have ever read. In fact, I used it to name many of my characters. The loss of this blog cuts deeply. I wish I had saved it somehow. Is that even possible?
Othe blogs I still read, such as Meet Me at Mikes and Penelope Trunk. I have been reading Sixth in Line by Elisabeth Hanscombe for years and was thrilled when she recently joined the writer’s group I have formed. Others I dip in and out of but knowing they’re there is comforting. Reading Down to Earth, with its incredibly daggy format and casual chatty tone is like going to my Nana’s for lunch. Many others I have left behind. Their content isn’t relevant to my stage of life, or they went crazy because some people do when they share too much personal stuff on the web.
I have been blogging in some form since 2006. It’s not always easy to think of things to write about but its a lesson in commitment and a form of practise for my writing. I have no idea who reads this blog, as I have never monetised it, nor had any statistic software added to it, other than what is offered and even then I don’t understand it.When I read that blogging is dead, I shrug. Blogging is as alive as you wish it to be. Medium is blogging. Longer Facebook posts is a form of blogging. Threads on Twitter is blogging. Morning pages online is blogging.
The term blog came from Web Log, which turned into Weblog, which became Blog.
Logging the web. Logging the day. Logging your life.
Software developers log their day. The run a “Programmer Log”, which is the dates and time of what you had done that day, and you begin to see what takes time, what doesn’t, what is hijacking your time and how much output you achieved. It’s a great snapshot of your day. How can you improve?
I consider my blog as logging my thoughts, my life in some form, and logging my evolution. I can be a petty, shithead, and sometimes when I go back and read my posts, I see that I don’t care anymore about whatever I was bitching about. I can also see great humour and love and loss and joy. In some ways, my blog is my diary, my confession and my explanation.
Read it or not, it will still be here tomorrow.
Happy Monday.
xx