Today is my second blogiversary, but I'm feeling very muted about it.
At the moment I'm not at all sure whether this blogging caper is any kind of good idea, and am wondering whether the several friends who pour scorn on the whole notion might not, after all, have a point.
And at the moment I have nothing to say, so instead might take a leaf out of Elsewhere's book and celebrate the day with some linkin' to a few ghosts of postings past, over the last two years.
On Latham and Beazley, 2/11/05: of historical interest. Note no mention of Kevin, who at that point was the merest speck in the distance.
On Kathy Reichs, Dorothy Dunnett, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, the Rolling Stones and Tolstoy, 16/12/05
On Brokeback Mountain, 31/1/06.
On A.S. Byatt's Possession, 22/3/06.
Anzac Day Ode to the Grandfathers, 25/4/06.
On gardening and memory, 29/8/06.
On education and the Howard government, 7/10/06.
A recipe for Christmas trifle, 23/12/06.
On French, 21/3/07.
And finally the obligatory meta-post, 12/7/07.
33 comments:
Don't stop blogging. It's essential that people of your calibre stay the course.
You're not the first and won't be the last blogger who sometimes gets sick of blogging. Who gives a stuff what some of your friends think. I hope you keep going as I enjoy reading your blog. You'll get your groove back.
happy blogiversary! i drop by here a lot though i rarely comment. and - it's meant a lot to me, being able to read blogs like yours that connect me to a wider intellectual world, and an australian one. what a great list of posts. i read the possession one and it's wonderful - i love that book (first recommended to me by an adelaide medievalist). so, er - thank you.
Ditto Meli! I read regularly but have never commented. Only blogs I read are yours (and its associated links, e.g. Sarsparilla), Tony Backhouse's gospel music blog, and the one my brother just started to share stories of his new life in Colombia. So from a total luddite (who only recently learnt what facebook even was), please keep up my favourite source of online humour and intelligent chatter. And from a purely selfish view, being an Adelaide gal, it's nice to read stories and see pictures of your hometown ... thanks muchly for all you share.
Hey, two terrific years. Some of your friends are really grateful you took it up.
Perhaps you can't feel the love. I sit here all alone every day; it's the only downside to being a writer. Mostly I love it, but sometimes I feel that if the world evaporated in a nuclear disaster, it might take me a while to realise. We've never met, but I love our chats. Thanks.
We're almost twins. Almost, you're a professional writer, I'm a big mouth. I don't get writer's block, I get foot in gob. Don't give up, we can't afford to lose a member of the wetsilkshirt perving group.
Yeah, what they said, and more.
A voice of sanity mixed with light-hearted jollity and a healthy dose of intelligence is too good to be wasted on merely print media.
Hang in there!
What they all said. Cubed.
I LOVE this blog, so intelligent and interesting. it reminds me
that a cat can look at a queen.
If it wants to.
Please keep it!
Amen to what they all said, specially fifi. And what a totally fun queen too. Humour, intellect, a well formed and highly educated appreciation of the beautiful, plenty of outraged contumely for the unjust - and a fine eye for the sordid, silly and plain indigestible.
You're famous in my house, PC - I iz always quoting you. Happy blogiversary.
Even more than what you write here, what you do here (you Renaissance Cat you!) nags away in my head. Unresolvable. It's not about agreeing with you or disagreeing with you, I often do both simultaneously, but this blog is like a second sun.
Thanks.
Thank youse.
(As ThirdCat would say.)
The only thing wrong with your blog is that there isn't enough of it.
Happy blogiversary!
I think there are too many cat pictures and the pink is garish.
Everyone's a critic!
Happy Blogiversary. If you didn't blog how could we all wish your Dad happy birthday?
Happy blogiversary! (late, just got back from weekend away.) i was going to complain that you don't blog enough, but Anonymous beat me to it. Hope that doesn't put you off.
If you ask me---and I'm always somebody whose advice you ought to heed---if your friends scorn it, it's probably because they're not doing it right. The rest of your friends can live vicariously through your pure blogging pleasure.
Keep going, PC.
It's like any friendship - however much you love it, sometimes it gives you the shits.
You know how much I would miss you if you stopped, so I won't embarrass myself by throwing myself to the floor, thrashing and sobbing. But if it's not doing it for you, you should give it a break - I'm going to stop, because I feel feelings of earnestness growing. And I will just cross my fingers and hope that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
ThirdCat, right back atcha, but I do see why you might feel blog burnout. I bet you miss it too much to abandon it, though; certainly hope so.
I do plan to carry on, just to make a few changes in my attitude and habits. (The problem is/was not the blog itself so much, more blogging, the whole reading/writing/commenting package, and the ways we can get careless about what we say to whom, and what that can lead to.)
But I feel a bit stupid now; I wasn't meaning to fish, just to whine. Thank youse all again from the heart for yer kind words.
Whoops! I meant I was going to stop writing that comment. Which finely illustrates your point, no?
Even in it's alternative interpretation though, what I said is (retrospectively) true. Every now and then I do retreat a bit, because as you say, the whole can be a bit draining (I actually avoid commenting a lot of the time, because I seem so often not to say what I meant to say). Plus, I think I'm battling a sort-of internet addiction, and am keeping a keen eye on myself - whenever I feel more drained than energised I make myself do something else (fold the washing, for example).
Oh. OK, then. I was going to write the following, but you can safely ignore it now.
============
Mmh. Inevitable blogennui, or fenestration-induced maudlinism?
Selfishly, I'd rather you kept entertaining in your uniquely erudite fashion, but if you're not enjoying it, stop.
P.S. What Zoe said about the pink thing. Garish. Though not quite as bad as Laura's diarrhoeic orange.
P.P.S. that reads a little too cavalierly indifferent above. If, on the off-chance, you ARE seriously contemplating blogicide and the only thing that will stay your blog's demise is a nauseating deluge of extravagant praise then I stand/grovel ready to debase myself in sycophancy.
3C -- yes, exactly; a good lesson in how easily one's remarks can be mistransmitted. I wasn't planning on actually bailing out at any point either, just reflecting dolefully (again) on the dark knowledge that the blogosphere is not all kittens and Haigh's champagne truffles.
And so, Fyodor, no blogicide and no call for nausea, grovelling or nauseating grovelling. 'Maudlin', not so much, more just shellshocked. (I wonder whether you read the Dorothy Dunnett and thus possibly remember Lymond's response in Book 1 to his brother's proposal to patch up his musket-ball-riddled middle: 'I don't think so, Richard, the fenestration seems fairly extensive.') I know you were at the train wreck that prompted these doleful reflections (and may I say that your intervention was both timely and vintage) but I also copped a ludicrous four-part de haut en bas bollocking by email behind the scenes. Leaving oneself open to such things seemed momentarily like a bad idea. As you once remarked yourself, 'Vote, feet, etc.'
The garish pink is explained in the archives: July 29th, 2006. But one day when I've got time to scratch myself, if one were ever to want to do such an unladylike thing, I do indeed intend to re-do the whole caboodle.
"I wonder whether you read the Dorothy Dunnett and thus possibly remember Lymond's response in Book 1 to his brother's proposal to patch up his musket-ball-riddled middle: 'I don't think so, Richard, the fenestration seems fairly extensive."
Wonder no longer. I thought a Lymond reference rather comme il faut given DD's work was the subject of one of your blogstalgia posts. It was your previous reference to said extensive fenestration that got me into the Lymond Chronicles in the first place. For which: many thanks.
"I know you were at the train wreck that prompted these doleful reflections (and may I say that your intervention was both timely and vintage) but I also copped a ludicrous four-part de haut en bas bollocking by email behind the scenes."
Yairs. Pretty spectacular display all-round, I thought. Some of us are connoisseurs of the vulgar art of Stoush and such friendly-fire episodes typically make for the best bloodsport. Fratricide begins at home, as they say.
The email back-channel snarking is always one of the high/lowlights of such grisly bagarres, and unfortunately not publicly available for shared amusement. From past experience, I imagine I can guess exactly who was sending you what kind of emails, too.
You were right, BTW, from the very beginning. Not that you need me to tell you that.
"shniplf" - rather appropriate, I thought
Fyodor I've painted the front door that shade of orange. According to British Paints it is called Bollywood.
Orange, schmorange. Bollywood, possibly. Personally I would call it Burnt Butternut or possibly Acapul- um, Harvest Gold.
Well I for one will be glad to see you gone from the blogosphere for good.
Most people are utterly over your foul-mouthed, abusive, paranoid, homophobic and incoherent tirades about fractional reserve banking, tax eaters, ice ages, commie raptors, diamond nano-rods and whatever else flits through your addled pate. And your constant cries of LYING C**T! whenever someone dares challenge your "wisdom".
Frankly I think...what?...um, oh right.
Ahem, I appear to have confused you with another blogger. Sorry about that.
No, no, stick around and keep writing good stuff, even if I only come here for the mogblogging.
"According to British Paints it is called Bollywood."
*fails to restrains self from commenting in questionable taste*
Well it does have a whiff of Delhi-Belly about it.
Chiming in late, but happy blogiversary and here's hoping the blogenshaden lifts in short order. I would definitely miss your writing around the place.
Lymond's response in Book 1 to his brother's proposal to patch up his musket-ball-riddled middle: 'I don't think so, Richard, the fenestration seems fairly extensive.'
I can't help but picture Graham Chapman playing the pipe-smoking doctor -- which, of course, he was! -- prodding at the gory stump of a severed limb. Grunting, thoughfully: "mmm, mmm."
Happy blogiversary! I understand the mixed blessing feeling, but we've certainly all enjoyed reading your blog.
Happy Blogiversary. I hope that you decide to stick with it. Your blog gives dignity to blogging.
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