Dude! It’s July, people got things to do. 🙂

Blogging as a medium seems to be very good at getting dragged down into the minutiae of introspection. Often this is one of its best features, but it can roll over into self-indulgent navel-gazing really easily.

So hardly surprising that when a week… a couple of days… a few hours… go by without someone whacking up a two thousand word essay, that people start to worry about the whole thing collapsing, or worry about “What It All Means”.

Inevitably, blogging is a mixed bag and this is precisely because of its accessibility and the fact that the vast majority of participants have other stuff going on in their lives.

I get as frustrated as the next man when I check a blog by someone who I know has a whole wealth of stuff they could write about (stand up Paul Meme and Dubversion!) and the last entry is the same one from 3 weeks before. But people have to go out there and live their lives to have something to write about.

Personally, I’ve always just bunged things out there*, so the discipline of doing a blog comes fairly naturally to me, work and sleepless nights at home aside.

I’m also fortunate enough to have pretty good feedback (and more is always very welcome indeed). Blogging can be a thankless task (especially if your blog is rubbish, heh heh). There are a load of people who read blogs regularly but don’t participate by sending comments. Which is a shame because it makes it all a bit one-way and passive. Which can be depressing for bloggers, which means less posts (or more navel gazing posts). Take note, dear reader – YOU can break this cycle…

Had a big ranty chat with Jason and the better half the other night about the general low-level of public debate. (I.e. specifically that you can have your say on everything that doesn’t matter: Reality TV, New Labour focus groups, etc.)

Jason was trying to fit blogging into this, because apparently it’s being heralded as some sort of revolutionary new form of publishing, blah de blah (which it ain’t – it’s just an easy way to update an website!). But he has a point when it all spirals into a downturn and there’s nothing to get your teeth into – everyone is checking everyone else’s blog to see who has updated and who is commenting on that update. This generates a feeling of having to catch up so you’re not left behind. It’s an insular world, baby.**

But there is potential for other stuff to emerge – new face to face relationships, collaborations, exchanges of music, whatever. I guess the key is not to invest too much importance in it all, but let\’92s face it, we\’92re all a little obsessional otherwise we wouldn’t be here, would we?

I can see that Matt is trying to give people a kick up the arse so there is more interesting stuff to read, which is cool. But maybe what I’m saying here is that things go in cycles. In ye good old days you had some fanzines that ran to 30 issues and some that disappeared after one. Sometimes the one-offs were the best, sometimes not. So it goes.

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* I used to do monthly updates to uncarved.org which were a bit like this. In the mid 90s I did a monthly personal zine which ended up being called “the sheets project” because each edition was a double-sided A3 sheet. It was basically a diary, reviews, clip art. Plus there was a bonus sheet of AKCT fiction by a mate, and other inserts. Compulsive ranter or self-obsessed nerd? You decide!

** And yes, this post is just adding to the pile of self-referential rubbish… I blame two sleepless nights.