I actually got an email yesterday from Mike wondering how things were going with me since I haven’t been blogging much lately. Well, here’s your answer Mike, things are going very well.
For the past few years blogging has been a kind of game for me. A strategy game, to be exact. I loved the game (still do) but more than that I loved that the game brought social interaction into my otherwise church-entrenched life. In the game of blogging I always wanted to write interesting, well written essays, or at least link to them when they were written by others. My subscriber count and my Mint stats were how I knew whether I was winning at the game or not. You may think I’m kidding, but looking back at my years blogging that’s how I felt many times, like I was competing against other bloggers for page views.
Eventually, however, the game grew tiresome. Why? Because what I wrote about or linked to, or even the frequency at which I posted mattered little in my page views or subscriber count. For instance, we all know that last month and this month my posting has been paltry, yet my hits and readership have been utterly unaffected:
I was writing just to write, because, ya know, you gotta keep up the regular posts or else your readers will leave. And I got sick of writing just to write.
So now I write or link when I really want to. At my own pace. Blogging isn’t a game to me anymore. It’s still a passion of mine but I’m not “in it to win it.” I’m just in it ’cause it’s fun. Also, I’ve got a new game to play, World of Warcraft. But unlike blogging it’s meant to be a game and nothing more. WoW is a very fun game for me because, like blogging, I have interaction with other people.
Unfortunately many of the people I interact with in the virtual world of Azeroth are immature preteens. Still, many aren’t immature, nor preteen. I have found a guild where many members have families or are married without kids and all of them have at least graduated high school. In fact, one lady I play with has children that are in high school, she’s in her 40s. That’s pretty cool if you ask me. Another fella I met plays with his wife on a regular basis. I enjoy interacting with them because while we’re playing “the game” we’re chatting about real life things. But I digress.
My point is that I haven’t been blogging much because it’s no longer something I’m competing in, it’s just a casual, twice weekly distraction. The blogging game has been replaced by another game that’s just as fun and just as interactive for me. Now I just need to get my mom to play WoW.
