I wish I was like you, easily amused

Whenever I go more than a couple weeks without writing something, I come back and, for some reason, write it off as being lazy.  That might have something to do with it.  But, truth be told, its simply that I don’t have anything I feel is worth writing about.  There will be little things that happen during the day that I’ll e-mail to myself or jot down on a sticky on my computer’s desktop devoted to possible blogging topics.  But many times, at the end of the day, I look at the list and don’t feel like writing about any of it.  I’ll leave it on the list and tell myself I’ll get to it another time.  Only, that rarely ever happens.  After about a month, the list gets unmanageably long and delete all but 3 or 4 topics.  Maybe there’s a shelf life to blog topics or maybe they just aren’t really worth writing about.  I don’t know.

When I find myself with no work to do, I read, among other things, blogs.  I subscribe to quite a few blogs through Google Reader (RSS feeds are great, you don’t have to incessantly check sites that you read.  When they get updated, your reader gets updated and you don’t have to check 30 different sites everyday.) and log onto DCBlogs‘ live feed several times a day.

Since I’ve joined the workforce, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon.  There are quite a few bloggers in the D.C. area that update their sites at, or around, the same time everyday.  At around 10 am and noon, my Google Reader is inundated with new blog posts.  And, on DCBlogs, you see many of the same avatars show up.  So, either the workforce in D.C. does nothing but blog everyday between 9 am and noon, or people write their entries the night before and set it so that it doesn’t become visible until the same time each day.

I tend to think the latter and here’s why: people obsess over their blog stats.  I used to do it.  I wanted to see how many people were reading me.  Then I realized it was useless because the vast majority of hits I was getting came from Google searches containing “posh and becks” or some variation because of a post I made over half a year ago (the week that David Beckham moved to the U.S., my hits soared to over 1000 hits a day from the normal 10-30 or so…blog traffic is a fleeting thing).  I also realized, the only people regularly reading my blog were my mom, one of my cousins, my brother, and Andy.  And finally, I realized, what I have to say isn’t really that important in the grand scheme of things and to expect people to flock towards my blog is just stupid.  Besides, I started blogging in high school because I needed an outlet.  Not to become the next big thing on the Internet.  Sure, a small part of me wanted people to read it, but that wasn’t my motivation for writing.

Coming back to the point, I find it amusing that people set their blogs up to show their posts at the same high traffic times everyday.  Let’s face it.  It is flattering when you can see that there are people reading your rants.  People like attention.  So what better way than to release your post at the time when the largest number of people are reading.  You maximize your potential number of readers.  Some of these bloggers I find to be very insightful, interesting, funny, or just plain irreverent as evidenced by my subscription to their RSS feed.  I’ve even met a handful of them at these blogger happy hours that are much more fun than they sound.  Others are just whiny attention whores.  Regardless, I find it amusing that people use blog traffic stats as an ego booster.  I mean, if it makes you happier, then I guess that’s a good thing.  But, if you’re that obsessed with them, I suggest you get out of the house and meet some people you can actual see and hear.  I guess a blogger happy hour would be the place to start.