I finally decided to sit down and clean out my Reader.
Let me explain. A “Reader” is a list of blogs you follow that have been subscribed to via GFC (Google Friend Connect) or through the RSS Feed. When I first started blogging I went crazy following every body who so graciously commented, tweeted me, or even mentioned that they had a blog. It was a mess and I followed people just for the sake of following and trying to be supportive. What I realized, however, was that there is no physical way possible to keep up with reading hundreds of blogs on a weekly basis, especially with prolific bloggers who write every day. I deleted a good portion of them and only kept the blogs that I was really excited about. That still left me with a ton of them and I still had trouble keeping up.
I decided again that I would go through my list and see if there were blogs that I just didn’t find interesting anymore or really didn’t apply to my needs at the moment. What I found was that the ones that were kept active were the ones that really were my favorites and that I looked forward to reading every week. What was more surprising were the many, many blogs that were sitting empty, not having a post up for months. Those I deleted.
But…
I started wondering where everyone went. There were a few of them that mentioned this would be the last blog post. There were a few that ended one blog while starting another. But there were so many that left that last blog post sitting there without any rhyme or reason to why that was the last. Did the person just get tired of writing? Did they have trouble in their life? A divorce? A death?
Blogging is so personal that when you have read what another person has written for so long and then suddenly you hear nothing, you start to wonder. You start to worry.
Here’s my promise. If there every comes a time when I no longer have an interest in writing this blog… I will tell you. I’ll do that final post. I’ll tell you why I can no longer continue. I hope that never happens, but we all know that life gets in the way when we’re making other plans.
And in the meantime… I cleaned out my Reader so I’m ready to start adding some more fascinating blogs back in. Got any ideas?
So glad to know someone else went crazy with the RSS feeds. I finally had to go through and clean some of mine out because it was too hard trying to keep up. Now, when I add new ones, I try and make myself delete others. Found you by way of Content Brew. Looking forward to participating in the class next week.
Hi Kacey - I love your blog, great name. I can’t wait to start on Monday with Content Brew either. I’ve been blogging for years and I feel like I’m so disorganized with it. Need to get myself on some kind of schedule.