Looking for Bloggons

“'Maybe there’ll be something I can write about in the Times today,' I thought as I headed for the computer." So wrote podfellow Richard Lawrence Cohen yesterday, speaking for thousands, maybe even millions of other bloggers. This is something that happens to us: it gets turned around. Instead of the blog being a welcome place to put the thoughts we have, our blogs drive us to go in search of thoughts to have.

This is particularly apparent on a slow inner news day, one of those fallow, bovine, cud-chewing days when we really don't have much of anything to say (if only because we just blurted out some huge, consummate, climactic thing yesterday) and would rather just stand there vacantly, switching our tails, or run around and work up a brainless sweat. But the blog generates a drawing sensation. Every day it's empty again and needs to be fed. This is partly just a miniature version of what every regular newspaper columnist goes through. And partly it's a sort of provider feeling, like you've got to go out hunting every day to feed your family. Your pod is waiting, with sparkling-eyed anticipation. You know how crestfallen you feel when you go to one of their blogs and there's the same old post, day after day. You can't do that to them. And beyond them, out in the shadows, are the unknown numbers of lurkers and browsers whom you aspire to lure in and hook, who will simply swim away and maybe never come back if you don't have something enticing to offer on a regular basis.

And so we go looking for something to blog on -- looking for bloggons. Passing newsstand, catch glimpse of headline: Catholic schoolgirls in Queens catch flasher using camera cellphone. Hmmm: is this bloggable? Go home, go to Daily News website, see. Call it "Cellular Empowerment." Other examples of cellphones used to stop crimes. Dick Tracy: Crimestopper's Textbook. Two-way wrist radio. The future is now. Nahhhh -- too much of a stretch . . .

- amba

UPDATE: The bigger you get, the worse it gets, apparently. Ann Althouse:

I'm getting a late start blogging (and everything else) today . . .

Now, I'm seeing that, during the night, my Site Meter clicked up over 1.5 million. That's pretty cool. It just hit 1 million around the 31st of January, a year and a half month after it began. Anyway, this traffic milestone -- and thanks for reading! -- is making me sorry I don't have some solid blogginess for you yet today.

So, I need to do some paper-reading and I want to do a little blogging. . . .

UP-UPDATE: Hey to Althouse readers!

UPDATE III: And to Sisu readers! Wow, whatta post! It explains WHY the gratifications of blogging -- complex, yet immediate and non-deferred -- are so much puzzlingly (and perilously) greater than those of other, more official and remunerative activities.

The gratification (feedback) of most writing is deferred, sometimes to infinity. The gap between writing anything and getting a response from anyone, if ever, yawns unnaturally wide. With blogging, I believe we are reverting back to our Stone Age tribal natures. Like a tribal storyteller, we get immediate laughs and hoots and slaps on the back from people whose response we trust because, well, because we know them; they're our pod. The loneliness of writing is gone, and the absurd sense of performing to an unresponding void (every writer gets flop sweat just from playing to the stony night; like abandoned children we conjure up an imaginary audience, but reflecting our own bipolar self-assessment, it's jeering as often as cheering). Traffic stats like Ann's are gravy; they correspond to the reputation of an especially good storyteller or trustworthy news source spreading beyond the immediate campfire to the whole region. But that's secondary. What keeps us going is the immediate esteem of our peers. Oh, and let's not forget the extra jolt of juice we get from being recognized/ linked to by our role models! Thanks, Ann and Sissy!

UPDATE AGAIN: A shout-out also to visitors from Alas, a blog. (Why does that sound like an anagram? A gala slob? Global as a . . .)

Comments

[Danny]

Oy, the way you capture the inner life of bloggers is so amazing and dead-on accurate that it makes my mouth fall open. Plus, you provide a poetry to the blogging experience that is so much more appealing than any whining or rambling I will ever do on the subject! From the vacant switching of our tails to the concerns about the sparkling-eyed anticipation of our pod mates and the unknown lurkers who will swim away—you have NAILED it! Of course, you never have to worry about feeding your pod since you are so prolific you have become the Joyce Carol Oates of bloggers.

[amba]

You mean Ms. Quantity Not Quality? Oy. . . . And as for you "whining and rambling," your fourth-month anniversary post, I think it was, was one of the best things ever written on blogging, hands down. Nobody is as vulnerably funny as you. If that's whining and rambling, long may it wave.

The only reason I blog so much is because I am frantically avoiding my real life and obligations. When they come and cart me away to debtors' prison, I hope they don't repossess the iBook.

[Ally]

It must be a character defect: I still don't get it...

[amba]

"It must be a character defect"

That's an ambiguous statement. You mean yours, or ours? (I have a hunch you'll say one and mean the other.)

[amba]

I can't help it -- "looking for bloggons" reminds me of that awful Star Trek joke the punch line of which is, "They both circle Uranus looking for Klingons."

[Ally]

No, I actually meant the defect is mine. Blogging has not entered my bloodstream. I have to will myself to do it.

For those of you who keep journals religiously: has this supplanted your journal-writing? Once upon a time I was a journaler, but have long since lost the discipline. Journal-writing and blogging seem to be two aspects of the same compulsion. I've never been able to sustain journal writing except when I've been on some sort of international adventure. I suppose I'm just not introspective enough to find much to dwell upon in my daily life.

[amba]

You're just not neurotic enough, Al.

In answer to the question "does it supplant journal-writing," it largely supplants that aspect of journal writing which is observations and passing thoughts. There are still things you can't or wouldn't say in a blog, though.

[Janine]

This helps explain why my butt seems to be permanently attached to the computer chair. I thought the need to blog would wear off with time but instead, it's getting worse. Doctor, is there a cure?