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October 01, 2004

The Blogging Cycle

Quite a few bloggers of late have experienced a kind of Blogging Cycle. I noticed this on my own blog, as well as several other blogs that I read occasionally. I define this Blogging Cycle as follows:

  1. A fever of blogging entries. You blog about everything; your work life, your love life, your neighbor's dog, that odd mole on your right thigh, etc. This is the honeymoon period of the blog. Some might even refer to this as the "Live-Journal-ish" portion of the blog (No offense, LJ folks -- I'm just citing a term already in Internet lexicon).

  2. The frequency of blogging dwindles down to only blogging about things that matter. Like only blogging about politics, or about some technical feat, or about the heartbreak you felt after that girl in Accounting shot down your advances. This is the settling-down phase of the blog. This also might be when your blog starts getting noticed by the Blogosphere at large.

  3. Then, oddly enough, Real Life starts to happen. You get promoted, or you get fired. Life changes in odd and unexpected ways. You neglect your blog. You promise that you'll still keep on blogging, so you begin half-hearted attempts to regain that blogging energy. You notice that it's taking twice as long to blog an entry than usual. Your blog entries are now fluctuating between things that matter, and things that don't really matter but you blogged about it anyway because you couldn't think of anything else. This is the mid-life-crisis of the blog. This is also when the Blogosphere starts nagging you that you're not really blogging enough.

  4. You then begin to get desperate. You can't think of anything to blog, so you just start rehashing memes. You start to post pictures. You take a lot of those Quizilla quizzes. You copy and paste jokes. You copy and paste IRC and IM conversations. (Note that this step is often integrated into Step 1. It can also appear in other parts of the Cycle).

  5. Then begins the inevitable lull. The freeze. The Big Blog Vacation. The lengthy period of inactivity. The constant complaints from people you hardly know begging you to start blogging again. This is when you start thinking to yourself if you should just quit. Or you think maybe it's time for a redesign, or a restart. But that will have to wait, because other things just seem more attention-grabbing.

  6. Eventually, you will begin all over again. You may restart at Step 1, or you may go directly to Step 2. And somehow, this cycle begins to show itself again. And again. And again.

These steps may be followed one after another, or they can be switched around. For example, I tend to skip around from Step 1 to Step 3, Step 4, and then skip Step 5 completely and go back to Step 2. There are times when I do follow these steps from 1 to 5.

I realize there are many bloggers who don't fit into this Blogging Cycle. This is just my personal experience with it, plus I've seen other blogs take the same route. To those bloggers who've maintained a steady flow throughout, I salute you. You have more discipline than I do.

Now to see if there are any blogging memes I can exploit...

Posted by Nicole at October 1, 2004 07:13 AM

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Comments

You've just summerized my feeling of late. I went from being able to post multiple times a day to work getting in the way. If I was lucky to post a radio blog or comment on someone else's site I was lucky. Then I started having family issues and blogging about it took a back seat. From their all the memes started.

A very astute assessment!

Posted by: KB at October 1, 2004 09:38 AM

You definitely got the pattern down.

Alas, why my site is basically becoming nothing more than a place to talk about my toy collection.

Posted by: Nala at October 1, 2004 12:25 PM

just post about anything. sometimes the comments people make about whatever you post make the post interesting

Posted by: jack at October 1, 2004 01:07 PM

I'd like to think that I started at #2 and have stayed there. I try to keep my posts more topic oriented, but it doesn't always work out that way. I'm hoping to stay put at #2 by posting this list on the wall next to my computer...haha.

Posted by: Greg at October 1, 2004 02:21 PM

I fit mostly into some version of this cycle, but I also have this tendency to post entries that really don't have much to do with anything: conspiracy theories, the like. (Hopefully) entertaining stuff that doesn't necessarily have relevance at the moment.

Posted by: A2K at October 2, 2004 05:15 PM

Girl, its freaky how dead on you are. Seriously.

I feel like I'm reading my life here.

Posted by: Jasmeet [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 3, 2004 03:31 PM

Wurd.

Posted by: Erik at October 7, 2004 10:33 AM

Thanks for the warning. Now I know what to expect. I was considering writing an article about my toys. They're such good toys! All will be revealed in due time.

Posted by: fogfish at October 11, 2004 10:07 PM

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