Is there anybody out there?
Like many people who blog, I have a secret (or not-so-secret) desire to be heard. I want to have something meaningful to say and I crave the acknowledgement from others that I have, indeed, said something they found meaningful. Short of that, I crave acknowledgement that people are listening to whatever crap I might be spewing forth.
Let's face it, I'm an extrovert and I crave attention.
This is why I will have bursts of blogging activity for a week or so, then dead silence for a few weeks or more -- I need the feedback from others to keep me motivated. I have a smallish group of friends and family who I'm pretty sure read my posts because they will occasionally reply to something. But when I read the blogs of those friends, they always seem to have people replying from all over the place. Do those friends of friends ever read my blog? Am I just lacking my own friends? Lacking online friends? Lacking LJ friends? Do I need to find an LJ community that overlaps my interests?
I leave almost every one of my posts open to the public in the lame attention-grabbing hope that someone I've never met will find something I say interesting and reply. Of course, that means I need to say something interesting, and since most of my posts have something like tv reviews or parenting stories, it's unlikely to engender a strong enough reaction from a stranger to evoke a response. Plus, my blog doesn't really have any central theme or topic, so it's unlikely to catch and keep someone's attention if they don't know me personally. The problem is that without feedback from others, I find myself not being as motivated to dig deeper and take the time to post something insightful. It's a nasty catch-22 that only exists because of my emotional needs. I just have to decide I want to do this and do it. I have to find some other way to motivate myself.
So *is* there really anybody else out there? If you happen to read this and you don't know me, please feel free to leave me a comment so I know somebody's reading.
In fact, this gives me an idea....
Let's face it, I'm an extrovert and I crave attention.
This is why I will have bursts of blogging activity for a week or so, then dead silence for a few weeks or more -- I need the feedback from others to keep me motivated. I have a smallish group of friends and family who I'm pretty sure read my posts because they will occasionally reply to something. But when I read the blogs of those friends, they always seem to have people replying from all over the place. Do those friends of friends ever read my blog? Am I just lacking my own friends? Lacking online friends? Lacking LJ friends? Do I need to find an LJ community that overlaps my interests?
I leave almost every one of my posts open to the public in the lame attention-grabbing hope that someone I've never met will find something I say interesting and reply. Of course, that means I need to say something interesting, and since most of my posts have something like tv reviews or parenting stories, it's unlikely to engender a strong enough reaction from a stranger to evoke a response. Plus, my blog doesn't really have any central theme or topic, so it's unlikely to catch and keep someone's attention if they don't know me personally. The problem is that without feedback from others, I find myself not being as motivated to dig deeper and take the time to post something insightful. It's a nasty catch-22 that only exists because of my emotional needs. I just have to decide I want to do this and do it. I have to find some other way to motivate myself.
So *is* there really anybody else out there? If you happen to read this and you don't know me, please feel free to leave me a comment so I know somebody's reading.
In fact, this gives me an idea....