I'm bringing up the topic of blogging today. Here. On a blog. And while I don't personally have a problem with blog posts about blogging, word on the street is that it's a sin on the same plane as wearing your 100% Target-bought outfit to Target. Or maybe wearing your Target outfit in front of a friend who doesn't have Target where she lives?
Something like that. Come to think of it, I don't really have a problem with doing those things, either. Clearly I have no sense of propriety, but that's okay because it allows me the freedom to charge right into the faux pas at hand and enjoy it thoroughly. If ignorance is bliss, knowing and not caring is a close second.
Remember that next time you go clicking around the internet, looking for things that you're not completely sure you want. Before you Google, "free ebooks about blogging." Because you will find free ebooks and you will find them by the zillions, and they will all be filled with invaluable information presented by the 10,000 brightest minds in all of the blogosphere. And then . . .
Just kidding, it doesn't work that way. While you don't stand any danger of getting chlamydia from blogger pro tips, you do run the risk of thinking that you need to not only read them all, but commit them to memory and adopt them as your life's mantra. That's what just happened to me, and it kind of messed with me. By the time I clicked the last red x on the last of the "10 Free Blogging EBooks You Must Read" I had no idea what in the world I was supposed to write a post about. I'm supposed to be controversial enough to spark conversation, but respectfully controversial - I don't want to offend anyone, because blog readers these days are just waiting to close out the window and make my words disappear as soon as they don't like them. Which begs the question: What am I writing for? Am I writing to spread ideas to the entire internet-using world, or do I just want to tell a couple close friends about my SAT experience? (Not that I'd probably do that anyway, because the only notable thing that happened was me not being able to find the room.) Do I even care if people close out my window?
Should I?
On top of that, there's all of that technical, computery stuff that my brain is just not good at. I don't know if the concept of RSS feeds is supposed to be simple, but trying to grasp what exactly they are and how they affect my blog made my head hurt. Learning HTML is like learning some dead ancient language from a Mandarin-speaking teacher: just about as foreign and out-of-reach as it gets. (Background information: I speak neither dead ancient nor Mandarin.) And all of these blog-analyzing websites and hosts? What even is Alexa? And how do I convert people? Blogging is sooooo not just about writing.
I'm not telling you about all of the blogging things that I'm bad at to gain sympathy. (Although if you're feeling compassionate, chocolate might be a nice pick-me-up.) I'd just like to share my amazement that there are actually people out there who are good at this stuff. Like, really good. And after learning what a huge blogging world it is out there, I think they deserve some recognition.
My hat's off to you, HTML interpreters and page view converters. May your fingers never grow tired of HTML coding things and your conversion rate never slip below 95%. GIF masters and RSS feed-ers, you rock. May your GIFS run smoothly and your RSS feed do exactly what RSS feeds are meant to do, whatever unfathomable thing that might be. (If you know things about RSS feeds and want to tell me, I'd owe ya one forever.) Most Popular Bloggers - may your thousands of readers grow to become hundreds of thousands, your hundreds of thousands become millions, until everyone who speaks your language reads your blog. May the demand to read your blog be so great that you have to hire a guy to translate it into other languages, including, but not limited to, dead ancient ones and Mandarin Chinese. May your posts look really, really cool in Mandarin Chinese.
May you have the balance to effectively walk the line between consistency and boredom, boldness and jerkiness, honesty and way-too-much-honesty. May your blog posts never be too long or too short. May you always create content that is useful and interesting. May you write promotion posts that people actually enjoy.
MAY YOU - ahem. I don't know where this turned into some kind of blogger blessing, but it happened so let's just hope that it comes true and not let it weird us out, okay? Because apparently "weirding-out" is something that can cause people to sentence me to the red x, and while I'm still a little unclear on whether I'm supposed to care about that or not, I'd like to keep my options open. After all, blogging is hard, and I can use all the help I can get. Especially with that dang RSS feed.
Allie
No comments:
Post a Comment
I love hearing from you - it's my favorite part of blogging - and I'll respond to every single comment!