This post is for all my friends who do battle in the trenches of the blogosphere. I feel your joy and you pain guys. I just recently was added to the fine staff of ReadWriteWeb to do stories about the latest technology of Web 2.0 or 3.0 (that was a good day), wherever we are exactly now. Richard MacManus has been kind if particular about everything R/WW as it should be. I hope I can help him take his effort to the next level. I have been "bustin it" for the better part of 6 months now. I thought I would share some stuff with the people who drop by this unpublicized (sorta) personal site of mine, so here it is!
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Blogging
Good days are those where you find something really great to share. Sometimes other people share fantastic things with you and then you get to pass them along, or perhaps you get some kudo or other for having "approached" excellence. These good days are made up of kind people, professional behavior, sunshine and a generally confident and secure atmosphere here on the blogosphere. This state of euphoria usually lasts for about 24 hours but can span an entire week in rare cases. I am sure this is just a reflection of the physical world, but the Internet has always had this veil of magic about it. One almost expects harry Potter to wave a magic wand over the endeavors we undertake here and on these good days it almost seems as if it is true. Blogging can be very rewarding, and I love the really good days.
Bad Days are the ones when nothing seems to go right. Everything about blogging seems to run contrary to the rest of your life. The Internet goes down, a page won't load, an editor is being unreasonable, your friends seem to have abandoned your kids won't stop harassing you and the dog has to go to the vet. I have found that bad days almost always follow good days in some sort of universal balancing act. A bad day blogging often starts with either now decent news to talk about where you have to perform the literary equivalent of making bricks with not straw. However, a bad day can also result from too much news and distraction so that anything you write is somehow less because of the pace being forced upon you. Bad days make one wonder why they exposed their "soft underbelly" to the world in such a way? Bad people, bad news, bad communication, anything can go bad in a second on the blogosphere.
Ugly Days are the very worst part of any endeavor and especially blogging. An ugly day usually begins looking like a really great one and slowly, methodically turns to shit before your eyes. You probably have busted your butt to do all, see all and satisfy all in a sometimes daunting effort to "create" a good day, but to no avail. Ugly days have not rhyme or reason to them, they just happen in an out of control fashion that creeps up like some monster in a B horror flick . You always catch an ugly day happening seemingly just in time to rescue all yourself from all the BS bearing down on you, but this only exacerbates its ugliness further. Your every effort is thwarted at each turn and you are left daydreaming of some Utopian paradise. Ugly blogger days often start with a really crappy comment on something you know will be fantastic in the long run. You write about something that is truly revolutionary and some dimwit sees fit to just flame your ass without the slightest investigation of what you have tried to express. In the end these days are ugly because you know that 6 months later whatever it was that you found excellent or beautiful about a subject will be worth millions and your observations will be lost in the grime on the floor of an ugly day.
Anatomy of Days on the Blogosphere
The substance of blogging and the resultant ambient days we experience can be hammered down into one word - people. People's reactions, consideration and dispositions toward us make up our days. Think about it, a flat tire is a pain in the ass, but if a stranger stops to help and you make a new friend the event can be positive. The dynamic of events is unchangeable intrinsically except for the actions and considerations of other people. That is why we are here blogging, to interact and express and help one another along this path of unchangeable events we call life. The impact we have is all that we are. I only know how I approach others and that I am certainly not perfect. Everyone who knows me knows this though, if I make some crappy assed comment on something of yours you can rest assured it is time to rethink it. The point is, I seldom make a comment at all unless I think it will help someone.
Logo courtesy Kuribo
Logo courtesy Kuribo
