it's a blog's life

There's a widget on Blogger you can click on that takes you to the 'Next (random) Blog'. Lately I've spent no little time doing this because I have been looking for good blogs to follow and read. I'm quite devasated by what I have discovered - so many of the blogs I find haven't been touched for months or even years!! In my imagination these abandoned blogs reside in a cyber junk yard where they float around in space (annoyingly my prosaic partner pointed out that they were actually still on the planet and never left because that's where the information was stored). It makes me feel sad. Many were lovingly written, expressing the hopes and dreams of their authors. Blogs provide a place to connect with others in the human-mess and share your life with complete strangers on an intimate level.

Suspecting the worst I did some research and discovered that, because of the emerging dominance of personal mobile devices, predictions of the death of blogging appeared as early as 2012. It seems that people don't have the time to read blogs any more. It also seems to me that online time has been hijacked by marketing anyway.

This is a tragic development. Or is it?

I've been re-reading some of my older posts and realised I used to write about more day-to-day stuff, more personal too - and that I have definitely taken a step back from blogging. There are several reasons.

1. I work in a prison which means the government owns my soul. When I realised that, I took down almost a decade's worth of very personal rants - including a few that were decidedly feminist and slightly non-PC. I've already been in the poo for making an innocent 'social-justice' comment on Facebook which confirmed it. I'm not afraid to speak my mind but the reality is I need the job. There is also the potential that my students could discover my blog on release from prison which would leave me very exposed.

2. I never knew how many people were reading my blog, or whether there was anybody out there that really cared about what I wrote. The only way you can tell is if people make comments, and I never got many of those - so I figured there wasn't really much point. I mean, why bother speaking into the void when nobody is listening?

3. Maybe I've said everything I want to say - I gave up writing in visual diaries years ago too. I can't bring myself to part with the stack of 30-40 journals even though I never look at them. They've done their job - they've helped me evolve my consciousness to where it is now. Truth is - I'm at a different stage in my life, I'm kind of tired of hearing my own voice (that's not to say I necessarily want to listen to other people either). This is why I've been mainly posting my artworks. Maybe, as a mature person I've come to the realisation that whatever I say won't really make a difference. 

Maybe it's time for simplicity, silence and grace - the way you see old people cherish the moment because they know how precious life is and half expect it to end any second. It's definitely a space I'm moving into. And it's not a bad place to be actually - the end of striving for so many things that just aren't important. Time to focus on the things that are.