The evolution of a blogger

One year, 27 days and 161 posts ago, I officially became a blogger.

It all started with an offhand comment from a friend. I was deep in the throes of job hunting and seriously frustrated with the process. I had been stood up, made to do role play and the final straw -- one of my interviewers fell asleep.

As I was moaning about my experiences and prattling on about the undignified world of the job search, my friend said, “Why don’t you write a blog.”

It took a minute for my brain to process the idea. Then I laughed. If you’ve read my masthead, you know I am a self-professed luddite and the thought of jumping into the blogosphere was skulking no where in my universe.

That night I woke up in the wee hours and instead of counting sheep, I started a one-person brainstorming session about blog possibilities. The next day I logged on to blogger.

The original concept was to rant about the idiocy of potential employers as a means to ease some frustration and maybe amuse a few simpatico cyber surfers. But as I jumped into writing, I just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm for a good rant. It seemed so self-absorbed, so whiny, so “who cares.”

Instead I began writing in an essay style. Talking about what inspired me, what I enjoyed, how I viewed the world. Sometimes I took two or three days and many hours to finish a post. I searched for the right word, a unique perspective, an original thought. It was relatively satisfying.

Then I began running out of material to write about. Being insightful isn’t so damn easy.

About that time, I started cruising through the blogosphere. I bounced from post to post and was impressed by the creativity, the variety, the fresh voices I found. I wanted to be funny. Then I decided I wanted to be impactful. Or how about writing around a certain theme. Where could I find brilliant photos? Maybe poetry. Maybe fiction. I could do recipes or talk about gardening.

Enough already!!! I was making myself crazy trying to catch up with everyone else. Wanting to be as good. Trying to be better. Trolling for followers. Spending hours making comments.

Thankfully I finally settled down and just started having fun. I locked onto some interesting sites and made good friends. I was impressed by the bounty of generous, kind, talented people hanging out in cyber space. I felt so at home. I was enthralled with the sense of community. I loved the expression.

And I spent way too many hours being consumed by posting and exploring my blog roll.

That brings us to present time. The phase I am in now I would say is a classic case of burn out. It’s fairly typical of my personality – diving in feet first, keeping a frantic pace, eventually wearing down my enthusiasm.

But before it’s never been such a dilemma.

I don’t want to walk away from the blogosphere, but it seems so...so…so ….uncommitted? half-hearted?.... to do it with one foot in, one foot out. The conundrum is the fence I am riding.

This was a long winded way of saying, you’re not going to be seeing as much of me. I think maybe I am morphing into a lurker. I will be hanging out in your comment pop-up box and when you least expect it, a tart response will appear. Maybe I will even have something to post about once in a while. Maybe not.

A couple of months back I did a Six Word Saturday post, half of which said I was: “embracing the unexpected”. Bottom line -- that could be what this shift is all about. I am clearing the deck for what is coming next in my life.

When I find out what that is, I will let you know.


................