Yup - I’ve been having the same feelings (as is clearly evidenced in my stop and start blogging of late). I went from 150-200 hits a day to 20-30. Am I still relevant? Do I need to know that I have an audience in order to be creative? Are people only interested in looking at pictures of my tah-tahs? Am I even interesting anymore?

Though it may not mean anything at this stage of the game, yours is the first blog I read regularly and you are probably the reason I started my own. So yeah, I’m as haphazard a reader as I am a writer, but I’m still out here.

xo

1.Sitemeter stats are not showing how many people are reading your feed. And those are the loyal ones.
2. You know that I know what you’re talking about because I recently had a “what’s the point” moment myself.

It’s true, it can be tough to breathe new life into it. In my own rises and falls in ‘productivity’ (blogging), I found it helpful to delete the statcounter before I deleted the blog; and then I’d never wind up deleting the blog.

I think what we find out is that our creativity isn’t necessarily a renewable resource, that eventually we run out of content.

Judging from this post only I think you have a lot to work with and a blog worth keeping.

Well well missy; you just have to stir the freakin pot, don’t you. Can’t leave well enough alone.

I love your blog; I go into deep depression when you ignore me, bask in the delight of your words when you return to me… You are my verbal speedball. But i see your point. I too have no friends! Isn’t it funny! But I think of you as my friend as I do a few hamster folk on flickr- a blog in its own way…Of course I wish you lived across town and we could meet for wine and chat, but this is better than nothing.

I would really miss you if you go. I guess I would have to move to Canada, and if we have an old man and an ex beauty queen in charge this is quite a likely scenario. I am already plotting an escape route towards the north if that happens. (Edit: Not a stretch of the imagination at all if the US ends up with an old man who appears to be embalmed and a crazy gun toting beauty queen in the white house.)

I will also follow you down whatever specialist path you may take- even if it means collecting rusty tea kettles… but whatever happens, I hope I don’t lose touch with you. I so enjoy your brain and how you express it.

maybe a week in Japan will open up some ideas…

lyn

well i have tried to post several times to no avail- so if the same comment suddenly shows up half a dozen times- forgive me— i am in panic at being denied- has the shut down process already begun?????

Lyn: I don’t know why but your comments went into the spam folder! I can’t figure out what’s happened. I’ll keep an eye out to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You haven’t written about Vicodin or Viagra, so surely my overzealous spam thingie couldn’t have made that mistake. I’ll ask my resident computer pro later tonight.

Don’t worry I rescued the comments. I also edited them into one - I loved the idea of a verbal speedball…which I don’t know if I really am that way. I like though! (And yes, I am very, very anal. I share much in common with Matt. See: Neuroses.)

Nope, I won’t be shutting down. I gave it a lot of thought and I think even five readers is good. Every time I am depressed - lately I broke a record for consecutive days of depression (I thought I was cured) - you guys cheer me up.

Lyn, I am looking forward to the day when you motorcycle up here. I am not sure when I am heading to your state. Mind you, we have lots of Bush refugees here. Two of my good friends graced Canada with their arrival, and I know of many others. Canada would be lucky to have you.

As for abandoned rusty tea pots, I was thinking I am more of the sort of person who would commemorate the spirits of poor road killed critters.

r/r: Yes, I’ve been told to delete the stat counter. I will give it more thought. As for creativity, surely it can’t be a nonrenewable resource…surely there’s always something more to be said. I hope so.

Thank you for your nice words and thank you for commenting, r/r.

Kit: Thanks, Matt said something is screwy with Sitemeter, too. Actually, your “what’s the point” moment kind of alarmed me too. Until I get back to BucureÈ™ti and meet you (I plan another trip either September 2009 or January 2010), I hope we keep in touch through our blogs. The good thing about blogs is that we can be creative in a way that one can’t be in email.

By the way, please post more photos. I really enjoy seeing them, especially of Romania. Though I really liked your Berlin ones. (I wrote a post about your Berlin writer, which got erased. I must re-write that post again soon.)

Raspberry: You probably already know this: you are one of the blogs I immediately check when your feed updates.

I think knowing your audience helps to define what you say. This can be good or bad. I censor myself because I don’t want to alienate a very nice reader who is of a different religious background than me. Though I did find the 70s porn magazine a few months back perplexing enough to post…I got some surprising feedback from someone else whom I would never have expected to have that sort of opinion.

As for what brings people, whether it’s tah-tahs or angora sweaters - I remember your angora sweater post - people change and evolve. I would get bored with someone who stayed the same. I am pretty sure I am different than a few years ago. (Sometimes I even catch myself saying politically conservative things, then I remember that Reagan, Thatcher, Jimmy Stewart, and other right-wing nuts all had or have Alzheimer’s, and I repent quickly by thinking that even pedophiles have rights.) Do you have any friends who are still silly partiers in their 30s or 40s? It’s pretty sad that they don’t, I don’t know, have new interests. They are pretty boring.

That’s the beauty of personal blogging. People are human beings via this medium. Some of them you hit it off with, some of them you don’t. So, if some readers like you only for your pictures or me for my hamster menstruation information, well, whatever.

And anyhow, I think the reason I am still reading your blog after 4-5 years is because you’re nice, you write well, you don’t mess up grammar (some people don’t edit their stuff *at all*.) and I like you. Thanks for the work reference too! I’m actually surprised you like me, quite honestly.

Eep! Way to hold up a mirror, Maktaaq…your rehash of YLD’s points made me reflect on how, in the past month, I have: 1. Made a concerted effort to clean up and, yes, brand my blog and make it more effective as a resume for a digital design program I have my heart set on enrolling in; 2. tried (and failed) to purchase the domain bluetea.com (maybe I’ll try again when I have more money to pledge to the cause…I really want the domain!); and 3. applied for an internship at a Gawker blog. Yes, I think the landscape is changing.

I was really worried that this post was a prelude to an “I quit”, but I am very glad that you’re staying. You’re the only personal blog that I read regularly, and you don’t need a “niche” to specialize in to stay relevant — I come because you’re a fascinating person interested in (many, different) fascinating things. I love your tastes. Do you remember how I jumpstarted my now massively snowballing blogroll by pretty much stealing almost everything you had in yours? You were a major influence as I was starting out, and are an old friend (old in Internet years, anyway!) I love coming to visit. Please don’t give up!

Also, everything Lyn said.

Hope some inspiration/contentment comes soon. Maybe a getaway. I’m going to clear my head in Alaska for two weeks. (And thanks to my new commitment to regular publishing on a strict weekly schedule, automatically scheduled postings will continue in my absence…my goodness, what have I become?)

Now looking back at recent posts, I see you are planning a getaway, to Japan. Have a fantastic time.

Ultimately, I realized I wrote my blog for me. It’s become an open diary, and since I have a bad head for certain personal events, I routinely search my own blog to dig up half-remembered past events.

And then I realized there were certain things I didn’t want to put on my public blog, so I toyed with the idea of a secret blog…

There’s a weird trend lately (Duane, John and I were discussing recently) and that’s the lack of comments. Duane wrote a post, which has since been removed, that put the blame on feed readers. I’m also noticing a lack in links from other bloggers, maybe microblogging/Twitter is to blame… I don’t know - and I’m one of those people that has taken the plunge to make a living off of blogging. We’ll see how this all pans out in another month or so

Bluewyvern: There’s nothing wrong with bloggers branding themselves, it’s that I like to read about people’s lives. Besides, if you can use your blog as a tool, why not? I wish I could do that - but if I did I would use a different blog, since this one is too tainted with my anti- everything rants and photos of dead animals. I’d start a whole new blog with the less eccentric sides of my personality getting sole coverage. Besides, I purchased (or am renting, as I see it, maktaaq.com). What is this Gawker blog by the way? Isn’t it just an online magazine now? Is it still considered a blog?

I don’t blame people for not wanting to get too personal either. There are a lot of stalkerish nutjobs out there and, I am sure, the government loves that we keep files on ourself for the day they roll out Stalinist purges. You probably heard about the recently published diary of a 1930s Russian 12-year-old - she committed her whole family to hard labour in Siberia thanks to her personal diary. It’s going to be so easy once we get Police State 2.0 here in North America. Oh well. It’s too bad though, because I love having this sort of insight into the lives of people I love. You can’t always be artistic in face-to-face conversations; writing brings a certain art to one’s thoughts.

Thanks for coming here because you’re interested in me. I like that. I am usually not able to talk in person about some of the things that interest me. Most of my friends growing up were very normal - the one time I gathered everyone together for Swedish film night, a surprisingly conservative friend complained that my favourite film was ruining Swedish youth. I can’t talk to people I’ve just met; it takes me months to warm up to anyone. In this society, that’s unacceptable and most people don’t wait to get to know me. Nor can I really speak English, evidently. Matt and once MaikoPunk made fun of my poor speech. So this medium is better for being myself.

Recently I realized that, if anything, my niche will be me. I am thrilled with the people that I have met through this blog, including you, Blue. (Plus, you hosted my sister recently, so that’s a double bonus.) If I weren’t writing here, I’d be writing in my diary or churning out ‘zines again and stealing photocopy paper at work. In the months before I started this blog, I even had four or five newsletters circulating at my old workplace. Mind you, I think sometimes I would like to do a print four-pager again. I would be sending you a stack, Blue, to distribute in New York if I do.

So what’s happening in Alaska?

Ryan: Yeah, I search on things that happened to me too. So…do you have a secret blog?

Rebecca: I think people are reading many more blogs than they were a few years ago. They don’t have enough time to respond to everyone. I know I comment on every sixty or so blog posts I ever read any more. It must be rss feeds; it’s so easy to get info and hard to see that there are other comments unless you visit the site or the comments also update on the feed.

You nailed it on the head with the mega-blog point. It’s like, how can I compete? And then there’s all these maddeningly specialized blogs… people getting paid to blog about, oh I don’t know, Fiat car repair shops, or [something that would put me in your spam filter].

I know I don’t say it enough but I’m glad you are still writing, and that Matt is too. You cute couple bloggers, you. It’s cool that you can write about personal matters, without it being every last detail. That’s where I could never find a comfortable space… writing about myself without feeling either too guarded or too exposed. Nutjobs are always a concern, as are the spy satellites.

Actually, I consider what I’m doing now for Yelp to be kind of a form of blogging - I have to knock out over 30 short reviews a week of stuff around town, so it’s kind of a go-where-I-go, do-what-I-do blog.

I still haven’t decided on the fate of my personal blog, though.

Maktaaq, you are the gold standard of blogging. Seriously. Whenever I think of cool bloggers I have encountered, I think of you and your awesome writing. Don’t stop! Especially not because of losers like me who fall off the face of the earth sometimes. (Sigh.)

LLB

Maktaaq,

I think you’ve hit a really important issue: blogging about blogging. I was once chastised because I wrote so much about blogging and twittering and forgot to insert my own personal content (by Jon from Beyond Robson). Truth is, my blog is a mixture of things. I don’t blog for popularity (although I have to admit unashamedly that I love being # 1 on UrbanSpoon!). I blog for myself.

You know that my Mom asked me what did I gain from blogging. I’ve gained friends, I’ve kept my writing in check (as you mentioned). But more than anything, I’ve been able to explore things that I would have never if it weren’t for blogging.

Every few posts (in between meetups, conferences, tech events and so on), I try to bring up my own personal thoughts. That’s what I enjoy about my blog and that’s why it’s called “Random Thoughts of a Student of the Environment”. I can write about whatever I feel like.

Stats are depressing, and yeah I love it when my readership increases, but I think it’s more important for me to realize that my stats only count when I need the sheer power of volume and readership to effect change.

I am trying to harness my blogging superpowers to try and effect some social change. I know for a fact that YOU have blogging superpowers. I love your blog, and I really appreciate the off-line friendship we have. I think that every few months, every single blogger out there goes “why the heck am I blogging”. I could point you to the posts where I’ve reflected on this

Short story made long - keep on blogging because you are awesome and your blog is awesome and even if I don’t comment on every post (and yes you’re on my RSS so I am guilty as charged of not appearing on Sitemeter etc.) I am still here.

And this was the longest comment ever.

Maikopunk: We’re not couple bloggers. The only parts of our personalities that seem similar are the ones we formed before coming into this relationship. Aside from that, yeah, everything you said, I agree. By the way, you raised my hopes with that extra post on your blog. Ok, I’ll be reading your Yelp stuff, since I am sure even there Maikopunkness will shine through.

LLB: Yay! You’re blogging again!

Raul: I was going to ask you yesterday how you answered your mom’s inquiry. Re: stats, I will probably remove them. It’s just nice to see a nice big number there, so I haven’t done it yet.