Wading in the Velvet Sea

In the small circle of those that I do read, there’s been an unusual amount of duress, stress, and general angst over the past few weeks. Such ripples of discontent have occurred before, even on the short time I’ve been online. I tonight began to think back on when I first started blogging, went back to read my first few entries, and realized that my one-year online anniversary is about 2 weeks (the 18th, for those keeping track). In that year, I’ve seen linking/delinking controversies, general confusion leading to hysteria between parties who only meet through a computer screen, and a host of other maladies. I’ve read some amazing sites, and through emails or IM, made some great correspondences as well.

I use the phrase ‘correspondence’ because I am loathe to categorize them alongside my flesh and blood friends. Yes, my correspondences have flesh and blood, but we’ve never met face to face, so all it amounts to, all it really can be, is an exchange of words and ideas. What you read on this site is me, but it’s only a small fraction of me. (That’s hardly an original thing to say, but worth mentioning every once in a while.) If given the chance to go out for drinks, I won’t choose to stay by my computer and see who pops up online or makes a comment on the site. Just not the way it works for me. Be that as it may, these correspondences have been a source of great delight over the past year that I’ve been a part of the online world.

Lately, some of these correspondences have been leaving their blog homes. Others have experienced deep frustration with the medium and/or themselves. The sort of naive joy that accompanied the first few months of my online time (which corresponded to the large blogger boom post-September 11th) has passed---people aren’t really boasting about ‘blog children’ or spouting off words that have ‘blog’ in them whenever possible (which, in my mind, is ‘blogtastic’ as a development, trust me) or reveling in the newness of what they are doing.

The online world that I encountered at the time had two set groups. The first were the entrenched, pre-September 11th, semi-pioneers/old hats at the blogging world. On the other hand, you ha newbies coming in by the hundreds a day. They populated their websites with nothing more than Friday Fives because while they wanted a blog, they didn’t have terribly much to say. People were so enamoured with having a URL that they forgot to go and make it interesting.

So, what has this proliferation done? Well, on one hand, it’s sparked a lot more national debate/discussion on the whole world. Certainly, I didn’t find out about the medium through Newsweek, as millions did a first months ago. The attention is good. The medium, I feel, is worthy of attention and its reach has far from been adequately explored. On the other hand, it has diluted the field to the point that some of the more ambitious bloggers have grown fed up or lost in the shuffle. Even more frustrating, some of who have ‘made it’ show only a high number on their counter as validation of their work. While hit counters can keep you going during the few first months you’re online, eventually, if you’re looking for the medium to change your life in some way, you’re going to eventually need more.

Another way to look at it, maybe---the blogging boom not only coincided with the post-September 11th attacks, but also with the economic fallouts that accompanied them. Take a sample of how many former dot com-ers write blogs. How many former English majors who were salesmen but laid off due to cutbacks keep blogs. If their habits are anything like mine, blogging fills both a time need and a creative need. A heavy-volume blogger (and for all the posting I do, I wouldn’t even come close to classifying myself as one) needs to write as both a way to fill the day and empty the mind. Both acts are happening simultaneously. As one who spent 4 of the last 7 weeks of 2002 on vacation, I know how often blogging became a mental therapy for me---it was good to escape into the words for a while.

I mention this demographic ‘fact’ (since it’s mainly a non-scientific observation I’ve been keeping for a few months) since those who are the most fed up are also the ones without a full-time job or educational program in their lives. The blog, at times, has been their entire life for however long they’ve been unemployed. Like any activity one does while unemployed, it sates, for a finite amount of time. But for minds so endlessly seeking creative outlets, the ambition that drives them to blog also drives them to either make money doing it or find some economic means for basic survival and/or self-esteem. They may seek encouragement or advice from their correspondents, but the balm their comments give isn’t enough to dull the anger or frustration inside.

Thus, a turning point comes. What gives? What has to go? Here you are, a writer, and by some accounts (including your own) a good one. Pretty snazzy layout, 15-20 comments a day, 1,000+ visitors on a slow day. Linked on 50+ sites. At the end of that day, however, none of the numbers really mean much, because while traffic is good, and the comments are positive, blogging ironically becomes a process for some in which the constant output of content for the masses becomes a one-way relationship in which the readership passively accepts and never gives anything back. Read any blog, hell, I’ve fallen into this moment of annoyance/despair on occasion---the ubiquitous plea for ‘more comments’. Blogging, for some, is a way to break down the hierarchy if the printed media----instead of being force-fed one opinion or story, without dissent, instant reaction and/or feedback is possible. Facts can be quickly gathered, information quickly disseminated. The process for many is ideally organic---a continuous give and take across websites and users to support (and for many, to supplant) typical media outlets. (The irony here, of course, is that while many people saw blogging as a way to circumvent the need to work for a ‘proper’ outlet, now often seek employment with said outlets after a few months or years online. Some, not all, but still, worth mentioning.)

I don’t quite buy that my audience owes me much of anything. Nor, I suspect, do most writers who are so frustrated these days. Comments in some ways are the quickest and easiest way to garner how we as authors are doing, but if you read some pages, the comments are as see-through as cellophane. I’ve talked to more than one blogger who doesn’t take half of the comments seriously. They appreciate that people care enough to comment, but the motivations behind some commenting is suspect at best. At times they are trolling, at other times simply spiteful/baiting, and other times are such unfeigned attempts at agreement-as-flirtation to make a sailor blush. (I am always tickled that anyone would read this site, and anyone who picks me up or drops me a link is A OK in my book, trust me. Maybe that’s because I’ve such a small site---I’m still in the coffeehouse stage of my blog-rock star career. I hope I’m not the ‘Don’t Do This’ section of the Behind the Music episodes by the time this is all through.)

Now, take all of these elements---the lack of newness, the lack of employment, the perceived lack of real honest feedback, and you can start to imagine why so many people are giving up the once green pastures of their blogs. I truly believe that I can write so much on this site because, at the end of the day, it’s ok if it utterly sucks. I pay my $10 a month hosting fee, and you read. Pretty simple. If my livelihood depended on the quality of my blog---who’s to say? For people who earn their salary via PayPal, however, the blog-as-livelihood is not a hypothetical, but an utterly real thing. Couple that with a readership that has borne out to be, with some notable exceptions, as passive as the readership of the New York Times and Newsweek, it’s a difficult goal at best, an utterly crushing at worst. The self-imposed pressure to consistently entertain an audience that doesn’t seem to very much care can only happen for so long before these writers, who as all artists are often extremely sensitive folk, snap.

Would my writing change if it became the basis of my salary? I would hope so. (Many of you who have read this far are probably hoping that, when I do, I get an editor.) I would hope it would get even better. (See comment about ‘editor’ above.) Right now, you’re generally getting 30 minutes of my mental activity a day, because it’s all the time I generally have to spend on it. I work at manufacturing that 30 minutes a day, yet feel blessed that I have a job, especially in this market, and that I don’t have to rely on the generosity of correspondences and strangers to help me pay my rent. I feel for those who do, and have worked to encourage a select few of those. At the end of the day, or the week, or the month, however, simple encouragement doesn’t always work, and these people move on to bigger and (hopefully) better things.

A lot of these people might have seen blogging as the stepping stone to a writing career. I would love to see them economically supported by their writing, in whatever medium it finally occurs. Lately, I have been contemplating a similar path. I feel lucky that I have an income that supports me while I work slowly but surely on this site as a side project. I wish all of those who use their blogs as their steeping stones the very best. I wish them the courage to keep writing, even when they feel that it’s useless. I wish them luck, both on and offline. Most of all, I wish them happiness.

Have a great weekend, everyone.