Is Blogging Dead?

Writing is not a pastime for the lazy. To write, one must think. Even if the writing is a blazing, monosyllabic vomit of vitriol aimed at the political/religious/ethnic/racial group one feels deserves a diatribe aimed at them, the one diatribing will occasionally pause to consider which four-letter word is most apropos in the moment.

 

Resuscitation Burn-Out

But must one write? Most who "own" a blog — at least one that consists of words rather than cheese- and beef-cake photos of their favorite celebrities — will answer that question with "Yes." However, there is a "rest of us" who must write, but, yet, don't. All it takes is for an interested(?) reader of this blog to scroll back through the last several years of posts and see that something happened to me along the way. A good portion of my last twenty(?) posts are about writing — my writing, or the lack thereof. "Reviving," "reawakening," "comebacks," "restarting" this blog has become a pastime in itself, albeit woefully infrequent. Hence the "reviving." Duh. It's quite embarrassing to "come back," apologize and write about "coming back," and then disappear again for a year. Shameful.

Have I lost the passion I claim to possess for writing? Perhaps I have. Have I lost the ability to think? Fuck, I hope not! Am I brain-dead, or am I simply too distracted to concentrate on writing ...on thinking?

 

Gyat-Damn Facebook

By now, that interested reader has most likely lost interest in scrolling around 11 posts back and has gone back to searching Ariana Grande wardrobe malfunction photos, and I'm merely writing for myself. But, scrolling back a little bit further, the reader would have noticed, around spring of 2009, a precipitous drop in the post output by this blogger. Why? Because that's when I became unemployed that year. Now, one would think, "unemployed equals plenty of time to write," right? Well, yes, but that's also when I first started finding high school friends on that new app I had downloaded called Facebook. 

Soon I was searching for and finding and friending and chatting with people I hadn't spoken with in decades, and —  in between job searching, audition searching, taxi driving, and getting life moving again — gradually every idle moment went to that gyat-damn Facebook! 

Unfortunately, 12 years later, little has changed.

 

Wasteland

These days, when I do make it back to my blog, it seems a desolate place. There is the dearth of my output, of course, but my once-faithful few ...what? ...fans, if you will, and — certainly as they came to be over the years — friends also have many months and sometimes many years between posts to their "Better Blogs Than Mine." When I do post something, there is rarely a comment, even if just to say, "Hey, I read your stupid shit post." That rare comment, these days, is always from the ever-faithful kenju, and she never calls any of mine a "stupid shit post" ...even when it is. She also puts up new posts to her blog more regularly than any of the others. (Yes, I just tagged her so she'll read and comment. Sue me.)

Am I to blame for this abandonment? Did I abandon them as I was sucked up into the cotton candy comfort of the gyat-damn Facebook, and so they abandoned me back? Do they all have lives, now, that keep them away from their blogs? Or have they also succumbed to the cozy, mindless clicking of "Likes" to approve of their gdFB friends' mindless posts, abandoning thought except occasionally to return to their blogs and marvel, "Shit! It's been that long since I last posted?!"

Or has blogging across the planet simply gone by the wayside? Blogger has changed a bit since I first started: gone, apparently, is the "Next Blog" feature that, with one click, brought you a random blog to view, read, or pass. I really enjoyed that feature; it's how I found the bloggers I call my friends, today. Are all bloggers feeling this desolation? Am I partly to blame for turning the "blogosphere" into a wasteland?

Or is the wasteland my blog alone?