Emerging…
So, I’d been gone so long that my front page went blank. I remarked to someone today that this is the blog equivalent of leaving your fly down, but I think a better analogy is letting your grass go unmowed until it’s knee-high; the stigma comes not just from the visible neglect, but its particularly public character. Makes me realize two things:
1. I do think of blogging as a very public thing. A coworker here at the Center said today that it’s more like a broadcast than a conversation, and I sort of didn’t feel like broadcasting for the last month. No real reason; just was “in my own head” for a few weeks, and am just feeling an outward pull now.
2. I’m struck by the extent to which I think of my blog (and blogs in general) in terms of feeds, rather than as a tangible site, with design and an actual presence. RSS has become my dominant paradigm for online information, and it was almost a shock to see my blank blog index page – almost like the way that catching the flu reminds us that as much as we think of ourselves as minds, soaring across information landscapes, we’re still rooted in physical, fallible bodies.
Anyhow, I’m back.
February 24th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
It’s ironic I think that I spend so much time worrying about the design of my blog, but I hardly ever visit other blogs and enjoy their design. I just look at my RSS feeds. It’s a shame sometimes too, because I like to visit other sites, to get the presence beyond the blog content. Even though I read Dooce in my RSS reader, I still go to the site, simply because there’s a feel to the site that changes my experience of reading her posts.
On a similar note,Photo Matt has a few reservations for relying solely on RSS.