The Sunday Salon 4.26.09: In which I jump on the meta-blogging bandwagon

2009 at 11am     Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky

tssbadge1 This Sunday morning finds me doing my best not to melt. It’s not even May yet, and we had a high temperature of 95 yesterday and are expecting the same today. I suppose I should be glad that the southern humidity hasn’t kicked in yet, but man, I was just getting into the swing of gorgeous spring weather. I haven’t had enough of those lazy afternoons on the back porch, and this heat is just not okay with me. Honestly, I’m never really down with 95 degree heat, but it’s especially obnoxious in April. So, I’ll be spending the day on the couch, drinking lemonade like it’s going out style, and finishing First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria, which seems like a very appropriate reading selection for a hot, disgusting day.

My blogging activity has been pretty low this week because I’m pretty exhausted. I’ve had a ton of special events at work the last couple weeks, and the next few will be equally busy, and by the time I’ve finished work and hit the gym, all I’ve wanted to do is chill on the couch and zone out in front of the TV.  The GoogleReader is backed up well over 1000 unread posts, so I’m going to do some reading/skimming today to see what I’ve been missing. But in all honesty, the priority today, and in my free time for the next few weeks, is relaxation. And it might be nice to hang out with my hubby some, too.

I love the blogging community, and I’m grateful to have this creative outlet and a place to record and share my thoughts, but it’s been seeming a bit like work lately, and I want to chill for a bit so I don’t get burned out. There’s been a great deal of meta-blogging going on lately, and those conversations are interesting and useful, but I spend 40 hours a week thinking about programming and publicity and how to attract and involve more people in what we’re doing at my store, and I don’t want to have to think about my blog that way.

I’m not a professional blogger or a full-time blogger or even, really, a part-time blogger. I’m a take-an-hour-a-day-to-write-posts-and-read-other-posts-when-I-can blogger. I want my reviews to be detailed and well thought-out, and I hope that you, my readers, will find value in them and keep coming back. I want our discussions to be interesting, and I want to know about what you’re reading and what you think about things.

But I don’t want to be connected every second of the day.

I don’t have the time to be on Twitter or Facebook all day, and I don’t really know what Glue is, and I know that means that I miss some good conversations and am not always 100% in the loop, but I’m fine with that. Even if I could spend all day on the computer, I wouldn’t want to. For me, this is a hobby. A serious hobby, as Amy recently said, but a hobby nonetheless. Being hyperconnected might mean increased traffic or higher-profile attention, but I’m not sure that’s always warranted, and even if it is,  it’s not a price I’m willing to pay.

I put in a lot of effort to (I hope) make my posts interesting, meaningful, useful, etc., and I’m glad that so many other bloggers do as well, but I think we might be getting too caught up in it.

Yes, it’s nice to have a lot of comments, but I’ll happily take 5 substantive ones over 50 fluffy ones. And yes, it’s nice to have relationships with authors and publicists and to feel important when we are asked to do reviews or when we get emails from authors or see a bump in our daily hit counts, but really, at the end of the day, our Technorati ratings and the number of times we update Twitter don’t matter. They give us feedback that some people like what we’re doing, and that’s  great, but they don’t have any substantial bearing on our real lives….you know, the ones we live when we’re not sitting in front of the computer.

And I doubt that any one of us will go to his or her deathbed wishing we had just added that one last Twitter update or put more hours into our blog.

Blogging is a wonderful way to connect with other people who have shared interests, and, for a lucky few, it can become a profession or a full-time job, but it should never take the place of real-life connections with people we can see face-to-face, sit across a table from, shake hands with or hug, and call in the middle of the night when the world comes crashing down. And I don’t think it should ever approach being as important as what we do when we’re not in front of the computer. I fit blogging in around the rest of my life, not the other way around, and there are just some things I’m not willing to share or sacrifice.

I know we all have different priorities and values, and I’m not here to judge other people’s decisions about how they spend their time. But I am here to openly admit that if you think my lack of Twitter updates is an indication that I don’t care about blogging as much as you do, you’re probably right. I do care about it—and I hope that shows—but not enough to spend all day doing it, unless someone is willing to pay me enough to quit my job and become a full-time blogger, and not enough to worry about whether I’m one of the “cool kids” or what my number of Twitter updates says about me.

Just being able to share my ideas and hear back from other people about what they think or how they reacted to a book or what their life experiences are like is enough for me. It’s a nice extra. I’d be lying if I said I never looked at my stats, or that I don’t like it when I see that a post I worked really hard on gets a lot of hits, but it’s not something I spend much time thinking about, and I don’t want to be made to feel like there’s something bad or wrong about that. You can’t please everybody, and I’m not trying to. If you like what I’m doing here, that’s great, but if you don’t, there are a bazillion other book blogs where you can find something you’ll like, and that’s completely fine by me.

So tell me, what do you think about all this? Am I right, or am I way off base? If you’re a blogger, how do you balance and prioritize these things in your life? And if you’re not a blogger, what do you think about all these meta-blogging conversations we’ve been having lately? Are we taking it way too seriously?

And please, have a happy Sunday, saloners!

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