Many, many thanks to all of you who have commented and emailed with kind words of solace and comfort. I am blushing a bit – I never meant this site to tilt so far toward the private and personal, but one writes about what is in one’s thoughts, and my thoughts have been occupied by little else since hearing the bad news about my mother. I had no idea, frankly, that so many of my friends and relatives had been visiting this site. Thank you all for that as well; it’s easy to get the feeling that writing a blog, for all its world-wide visibility, is little more than shouting up a drainpipe.
I’ll write what I can in the days to come, and I’ll try to get back to the usual pretentious rubbish as soon as possible.
Thank you again.
2 Comments
You’re not shouting up a drainpipe. As a matter of fact, thanks for all the free content.
As an occasional blog-reader, I am continually fascinated with and theorizing about what entries get responses. I’ve come to the conclusion there exists a roughly inverse relationship between the quality (or perhaps “completeness”) of a post and the number of resulting comments.
For example your post from a few days ago entitled “But Seriously” (while perhaps a tad reductionistic ) attempted and achieved far more than any of your “Politics” or “Darwin” themed entries, however no one replied.
It’s like if Einstein posted his “Theory of Special Relativity” or Jesus Christ posted his “Sermon on the Mount” or Lincoln posted his “Gettysburg Address” (sublime examples to be sure, but even substitute the archetypal haiku of your choice) they would probably garner few responses. On the other hand, if you were to post a short piece full of holes entitled “Howard Dean is the Answer” would get twenty. It does make sense if you think about it but at the same time it is somewhat counter-intuitive. Just keep it in mind next time you see “No Comments” staring back at you.
I would be interested in your opinion of this sometime– from a blog-writer’s perspective. It would certainly make a very interesting post in and of itself.
But don’t expect any comments.
Hi Brian, and in keeping with the point of your comment, thanks very much for commenting!
I’ve wondered about this myself – because I try to write something each day, and because I often have very little time, and of course because I am only an amateur scrivener to begin with, the quality inevitably varies. A lot. There are often days when it’s late, I’m weary, and nothing is bubbling up, and whatever I come up with in those situations usually seems pretty forced. But there have been a few posts that I have thought were not bad at all, and those seem to be the ones that pass by unnoticed. Of course, the daily readership here is maybe only a hundred people or so at best.
You’re right, the question is worthy of a post of its own, as is the question of why I’m doing this in the first place.
Again, thanks very much for your thoughtful remarks. You’re certainly welcome for the free content. It’s my pleasure to generate it.
Malcolm