A zillion half-started (or half-hearted) projects abandoned through lack of time or commitment or reaction or response. All those souls thinking that they’d like to give this blogging lark a go, only to find that they fall a couple of hurdles along the track. But then, their initial thoughts and ideas, their first tentative steps into this brave new and virtual world are still there, taunting them, waiting for them to return to the fray, hoping that they’ll get some more attention from their creator in a possibly slightly (but not completely) “Star Trek-y” kind of a way.
No doubt every blog that has its loyal followers will still annoy some of those people on some days who may very well vow never to return. Some blogs eventually go “virally stratospheric” (or whatever today’s term might be) in their notoriety, and good luck to them, whilst others merely plod along pleasing the loyal few, doing the job they were designed for, for the group they were intended for, and not bothering anyone else very much as they fulfil their destiny, but for every one of these, how many others fall unnoticed by the wayside? How many just sit down and say “I can’t do this any more” or have their Captain Oates moment and leave us behind with a noble gesture implying a subsequent return that we all know they’ll never manage?
How many blogs just lie down and die?
How does a blog die anyway? I’m told by those in the know that you should be very careful what you write because once you have, then it’s “out there” forever. I’m not so sure. If I look back on one of my rants and find that it no longer fits in with the general world view that I would wish to share I can simply delete it. Granted, if someone’s chosen to copy and paste my pointless meanderings (and in all honestly, why would they?) then that is indeed “out there” but most of my outpourings seem to be so very inconsequential and reach out to so very few of you that I really can’t see how anything I might have thought is going to cause any tremors in the corridors of power or the sewers of the popular press.
Meanwhile, of course, my (Writers’ Group) blog seems to be dying. It’s my fault, of course. I’ve not fed it for months now, instead I’ve concentrated on its more “popular” evil twin, and even fed fiction to it which should really have gone to its weaker sibling.
The dividing line between the two ought to have been “fact” and “fiction”, or possibly “whimsy” and “reality” but the lines have got slightly blurred. For example, should my Christmas tale have really lurked over there rather than smugly unravelling itself across Lesser Blogfordshire? I never can tell, but then many of my musings have been teetering along the borderline and have blurred the edges between those worlds.
Every so often I prepare myself to declare it dead and buried, to admit that Caterina and her ineptly poetic friends are history, and we approach to within a whisker the list of zeroes that would indicate that all hope was lost. But then there is a flicker of interest, a single viewing like an involuntary spasm convinces me that maybe there’s life in the old thing yet, and whilst it’s hard to tell what has been viewed and whether it was only by accident, and the observer scuttled swiftly away in obvious embarrassment at their mistaken intrusion, will never be known to me. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, that tiny monster-of-my-own-making clings desperately on to its continued existence, maybe hoping that one day soon its creator will love it enough to return and give it more sustenance and perhaps inspire its glorious resurrection.
Or, maybe it is just time to bid it a fond farewell.
Perhaps there is an e-graveyard out there for dead blogs to go to? I wonder about that. Like the fabled “elephant’s graveyard”, maybe a vast pool of latent knowledge and opinion is out there, waiting to be discovered again, waiting to be exploited and mined for the good or ill of humankind.
Or perhaps not.
I could try to artificially breathe some life into its fading body. I could be cynical and drop in phrases about the state of undress of well-known actors and actresses, or imply that my readers could make themselves a fortune if only they would try my secret schemes, which would possibly bring more people in, but I doubt that they’d hang around for long once they’d made to most cursory of inspections.
The truth seems to be that, much like a kettle, from the author’s point of view, a “watched blog” is never viewed anyway. If you go away for a few hours or days the viewings do tend to happen, but if you sit there pathetically watching the thing (and yes, rather tragically, I have been known to do this) the numbers will stay resolutely static. If I just leave it alone it will no doubt find its place in the big wide web-world and the one or two people a month who come across it will deal with it as they will, and there’s not much I can do about it.
So, it still waits there, not least in case the fledgling writers’ group ever decides to reform and begin to exchange opinions. I would say “again” but, well… you know.
Of course, it’s not dead, it’s resting…
It might very well be seriously holed beneath the waterline and sinking fast, but it’s still afloat, still hanging on in there and not yet ready to be consigned to the scrapheap just yet.
Very like its creator, in fact.
I Think you are right. Blogs never die simply rest until their creators need a good rant or something.
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