They always seem to sneak up on me. Today I've been blogging here on Typepad for 4 years. Typepad itself just celebrated it's fifth year. I've been thinking a lot lately about my blogging. I sort of resolved (NOT a resolution - I don't do those) this year to get back into blogging more regularly. I fell out for a while for lots of reasons, but the fact is, and I've mentioned it before, I missed it. Writing isn't exactly a gift with me, so I have to work at it a little more than some, and I'm not particularly disciplined at it, but I felt the loss of connection to my knitblog friends so I thought I would just try and do it regularly on weekdays, with weekends off. That was pretty optimistic. I didn't even make it a full week.
It could have been the fact that I was trying to write at night, after getting up at 5:30AM, working all day, coming home and cooking dinner, getting the kiddo to bed and tending to the many little things that pile up on a mother's plate every day, and honestly, I wasn't in the best "place" to be creating witty, clever chatter or even relaying what the heck I had done with my day. Not my most creative time of day. I was about th chuck the whole idea and berate myself for abject failure when I came across this article on Slow Blogging that I saw on someone's tweets that I follow on Twitter. It made a lot of sense to me and I think what happened to me has happened to lots of people.
Over the last four years that I've been blogging, lots of things have evolved online, new tools and applications have been introduced and since I tend to be an early adopter of much that is Social Media, I began using some of these tools and I think perhaps a lot of what I used to do solely on my blog, I am now doing on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Delicious - sometimes I even poke my head in Plurk and LinkedIn, oh and the Queen Mother of them all...Ravelry! Each one is great for some of the small focused activities that I had previously done just through the blog. So, the Slow Blogging concept is pretty appealing to me now that I step back and consider the sanity of it.
I guess I want you all to know that I am still here, but sometimes its easier to say what I gotta say in a photo or 140 characters at a pop. I am not going to abandon the blog, I am just going to be realistic. I can't do everything, much to my consternation, so I do what I can. Join me anytime on any of these other sites, or here on the blog when I can put it all together enough to write a coherent paragraph. My account links follow.
Twitter
Flickr
Facebook
Delicious
Ravelry
Thanks for sticking around with me.
Happy Blogiversary!!!!
Posted by: Vera | January 10, 2009 at 09:35 AM
Happy Blogiversary, Julia! I'm glad you're back to blogging more!
Posted by: chris | January 10, 2009 at 09:45 AM
Happy Blogiversary, Julia! I, too, am happy that you're blogging more -- you ARE blogging more.
Posted by: Vicki | January 10, 2009 at 10:05 AM
Happy Blogiversary! I'm also about to celebrate my fourth! Glad you are still here.
Posted by: Judy | January 10, 2009 at 09:47 PM
Happy Blogiversary! I sometimes miss my old blog and I can definitely relate to the article you linked. Food for thought.
Posted by: Annie | January 11, 2009 at 11:51 AM
I came to a similar philosophy two years ago, without putting a name to it. Simply, I post when I have something I want to say, and it's ready to come out. I'm sure I've lost readers by posting more infrequently (two to three posts a month these days) but I never got into this as a popularity contest in the first place. We are all amateurs...we don't need to apologize for not writing more often. Post at your own schedule, Julia. I, for one, will read when you do. :)
Posted by: Sharon | January 12, 2009 at 12:26 AM
Happy blogiversary to you!
Isn't it insane the amount of community sites there are?! So many communities. . . so little time.
Posted by: Steph | January 12, 2009 at 08:39 PM
Happy blogiversary!
I'm glad you're still around! We've all fallen into the time traps of Twitter or Plurk, or even Ravelry (although I think that it's probably more of a concentrated dose of BLOG!, than a time suck). You'll be pleased to know that a whole bunch of us are trying to get back to the blogs! I think it has something to do with the newness of the others wearing off!
Posted by: Jo | January 22, 2009 at 06:15 PM