Tale #1
Blogger Amy Sherman recently woke up at 4AM in a panic! Why wasn't her food blog getting as much traffic as others? "I daydream about the blog throughout the day... I worry about it at night. I sometimes put as much energy into it as my job," said Sherman, 40, a self-employed marketing consultant in San Francisco who makes NO money from her blog.
And you are panicking over a profitless/trafficless food blog because?
Tale #2
San Jose, CA blogger Rachel Pottol writes about life with toddlers. She CONSTANTLY composes blog posts in her head for her site. As she goes through her day, the 26-year-old makes mental notes: her daughter being entranced by the "Happy Birthday" song, her arguments with her husband, her work as a mother's helper. She set up Internet access on her cell phone just so she can check e-mail hourly for reader comments! "It's a way for me to connect with other moms," she said. "I feel like it's my job to keep these people entertained."
Look into being a clown if you want "a job entertaining people".
Tale #3
The blogosphere was abuzz in January after Justin Hall, a LA Internet junkie, posted a video of himself having a self-described "breakdown." In a wrenching 10-minute video, Hall, who has kept an online journal for 11 years, cries and agonizes whether he has lived too much of his life virtually. The episode arose because the woman he loves didn't want him to blog about their relationship and he believed he had to choose between her and his "art." "I think the web makes me not alone," said Hall, 30, in his video entry. "I feed it my intimacies and the web is my constant connection to something larger than myself." He's now reassessing the balance in his life and has stopped blogging for the moment. "I was living too much in the electronic world," he said in an interview. "I could sit on the computer all day, but it's not the same as being with a girl and smelling her hair."
Thank god you woke up! Can't believe you would struggle over keeping the girlfriend or keeping the blog...unless of course she was a real b*tch. Then pick the blog. Also, never ever (I can't emphasize enough) videotape yourself having a breakdown. Then you post it on the Internet for all to see! What were you thinking?
Tale #4
Dave Pell, a San Francisco angel investor, fits the bill. He juggles three blogs (one about technology, another about politics and a third about, well...blogs). Addiction, he said, is the only explanation for why he started the latest, the Blog Blog and posts more than a dozen times a day! "It's involuntary for me at this point. It's a part of who I am." Pell, 38, said he attends events he might otherwise pass up - so he can blog about them.
More than a dozen posts a day dude? Get a life. Don't walk, RUN to the nearest mental health facility because that is really f*cked up!
Tale #5
For some, keeping a blog subtly colors every aspect of life. Renee Blodgett carries a digital camera wherever she goes to capture images for Down the Avenue, which mixes notes on San Francisco, technology and poetry. She walked into a cafe recently and caught herself paying attention to the colors, sounds and people. "I was thinking how I could turn it into a post," said Blodgett, who is in her mid-30s. "Before, I'd just sit down, have my bowl of soup and zone out."
Yet Blodgett worries whether the blog will make her less social. "Will I become more engaged with my laptop, more engaged with my blog than I am with people?" she said. For Sherman, her blogging obsession is tied into sharing her food passion with others. When she went on a three-week Mexican vacation in December, she planned her family's itinerary around getting to an Internet cafe. "When I'm on vacation, I fear I'll lose visitors or people will forget about me," Sherman said. "I feel a sense of responsibility. I have a readership, a public, people who care if I stop writing. That drives me."
Ok I thought you were sane until I read that you arrange vacation plans around the blogging. At that part of the tale, I lost hope in you. Personally, I think vacation = no computer or work calls, ect.
Are you a blog addict? Take the test.
Among bloggers, addiction is a running joke. One even offered a checklist: You are addicted to blogging if you answer "yes" to the following questions...
- Do you think about everything in terms of whether it will make a good blog entry? Ah, no.
- Do you keep your computer in standby mode beside your bed and wake up at 2AM to blog? Good god, no!
- Do you skip lunch and blog instead? Uh oh, I have...but ONLY if I wasn't truely hungry and had nothing better to do. Not to worry, it was a one time occurrence and won't happen ever again. I promise.
Is it just me or is it odd that all of these tales are from CA people? Not knocking Californians, but perhaps the bloggers out there need to find something more to do with their lives instead of feeding their blog disorders. Seek some help people, seriously. I am sure there are more of you out there. These are just the tales of the few brave blog addicts that stepped forward and "blogged" about their sickness. Ironic huh?
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