One Year in the Blogosphere
posted by Daniel Solove
Today marks one year since I began blogging. I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for a year now. When I began blogging, I never thought I’d stick around this long.
I began blogging on May 4th, 2005 at PrawfsBlawg. You can read all of my PrawfsBlawg posts on one page at this link. I have also blogged at Balkinization, and my posts can be accessed here.
Over the past year, I’ve posted about 120 posts at PrawfsBlawg, 20 posts at Balkinization, and 325 posts here at Concurring Opinions. That’s 465 posts in 365 days — averaging over 1 post per day over a year’s time. My goodness! Something is seriously wrong with me . . .
For this occasion, I thought I’d reprise a post about my reflections on blogging after my first month. It seems that although I knew about the risks just a month into blogging, I foolishly ignored them.
How Blogging Changed My Life
An inspirational true story.
I’ve been blogging for roughly a month now, and I thought it would be a good time to take stock and reflect. “Only blogging a month?” the grizzled veterans of blogging might ask, “What insights could such a neophyte have?” I don’t have much of a response, except to note that if a 15-year old ice skater can write an autobiography, my posting about my blogging experiences is far less audacious. So here are my reflections:
1. I read many more blogs now. I read a lot more news articles. I surf the Internet virtually 24-7 (pardon the pun). Me and the Internet – we have become one. Why? The need for blog grist is immense. The blog is a hungry monster.
2. I’m beginning to categorize everything I read or hear into two categories: bloggable or not-bloggable.
3. I write with a different voice when blogging than in my scholarship. More specifically, my blog posts allow me to write in a more informal and witty way. I really enjoy this. I like the “blogging me.” I wish I could meet this person in real life.
4. I now have a permanent record of my stupid thoughts and ideas on the Internet. This probably disqualifies me from ever being canonized as a great legal thinker . . . as if that would ever happen anyway, but I always liked having the dream. Imagine if Oliver Wendell Holmes had a blog and he blogged about Star Wars. This would take away his gravitas, don’t you think? On the other hand, his blog would be great dark comedy, and his posts would be quite well-written. I’d probably bookmark it.
5. People actually read my posts each day. Some even write comments. Who are these people? Why don’t they have lives?
6. There is a dark side to blogging. I think that blogging is more addictive than crack. If I go a few days without blogging, I start to go into convulsions. Somebody told me that the best answer to the question, “Why don’t you have a blog?” is “I have a life.”
7. I now suffer from a new illness – an anxiety caused by not having an idea to blog about. I will term this affliction blogiety. I worry: “What if all my ideas dry up? What if there are no interesting articles out there to blog about or even link to? What if there’s just nothing left to say?” I snap out of these moments, but they can be quite scary.
8. I’ve learned to express ideas more succinctly and to write more quickly. I hope that this will have a positive impact on my scholarly writing. After all, the law reviews are now enforcing page limits, so my days of writing 80-page clunkers are over.
More thoughts later. After all, posting thoughts about blogging is a great cure for blogiety.
* * * * * * * *
Thus, I knew about the dangers of blogging, but I still continued. I was already addicted. My visit at PrawfsBlawg was supposed to end not too long after the post above, and I was supposed to return to a normal well-adjusted life. But as Michael Corleone said in The Godfather trilogy: “Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in.”
May 4, 2006 at 1:11 am
Posted in: Blogging
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Responses (5)
John Armstrong - May 4, 2006 at 1:45 am
What I’d like to know is this: in this last year, how many times in your posts have you used the word “blog” (or its derivatives)?
Cathy - May 4, 2006 at 8:48 am
“5. People actually read my posts each day. Some even write comments. Who are these people? Why don’t they have lives?”
I think I’ve just been insulted…
Simon - May 4, 2006 at 9:34 am
I confess that number 7 is definitely correct. I can take or leave blogging for a while, I don’t really think of it as being addictive, but I do worry that it’s hard to come up with ideas of what to write about unless interesting stuff springs forth from the news or SSRN. Reactive blogging – like commenting – is easy and actually quite fun; creative blogging is a great deal harder (this is why, as far as I’m concerned, Larry Solum is the king of the blawgosphere. Hey, at least the king is a formalist!).
BTD_Venkat - May 4, 2006 at 10:54 am
CO is one of my favorite reads. As far as surfing goes I am not a particularly prolific blogger, but lately I have been caught in these short traps of surfing the web. It’s terrible.
Shawn - May 4, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Great cartoon. I’m sure that’s the conversation I’ll be having with the kids someday.
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