Bi-Annual Blog Soul Searching Time

Posted on by Nimgimli

Based on the joke a friend made, I apparently go through this every time my blog comes up for renewal. I’m talking about trying to decide if I want to keep the lights on here. I don’t blog very often these days, but when I do get a fire in my belly to say something I’m happy to have a place to say it. Plus, y’know, it’s been running for something like 23 years and that’s tough to walk away from.

Money is tight these days and bound to get even tighter what with the state of the world, so I was even more tempted to let it all go. Or I think I was… honestly I don’t recall how much soul-searching I did last time. But in the end, assuming everything works out, I think I found a significantly cheaper plan that should be sufficient given how little traffic I get.

And traffic is another thing; I’m not sure I care about growing an audience (and if it hasn’t happened after 23 years it’s not very likely it will). In fact I might not WANT to grow it all that much. I mean it’s cool to know lots of people are reading what you write, for sure. On the other hand, it’s cozy and comfortable thinking it’s only people who you know and generally get along with who are your audience, y’know? I’m not here to court controversy or get into a big debate about topics, even though I’m sure both of those activities are great traffic drivers.

Every time I make the decision to renew I also make a declaration about how if I’m going to keep paying I’d better blog more. So I’ll say that again. I need to blog more. I actually enjoy writing blog posts, but I don’t enjoy the meta stuff around it; taking, re-sizing and alt-tagging screenshots (or coming up with images for posts like this one), checking the SEO variables, sharing to services and so forth.

But if I accept that I don’t care about traffic then I don’t really HAVE to do any of that, either. I can just spew out whatever is on my mind on a given day and hit publish. Which is what I’m going to do right now. So we’ll see, eh?

 

 

6 thoughts on “Bi-Annual Blog Soul Searching Time”

  1. I think most of us who blog go through this at some point. There’s a threshold we all have to cross, though, where blogging switches from an obligation over to a release. A few years ago I went though a crisis where I was obsessed with views and reach because I had seen a drop-off due to several factors (change in tone, a loss of archives, etc.). I considered whether it was worthwhile to continue.

    Then I realized that I had been blogging since the _mid 90’s_ when blogging wasn’t really yet a thing. I was there, doing it not to get views or because it was popular, but because it was something that meant something to _me_. Blogging is journaling, but in a public space. We can’t discount what eyeballs mean to us because if we did we might as well just write a diary and stuff it under our mattress. Someday, sometimes, someone will find our posts and be inspired, informed, or entertained. For every other day, it’s an outlet for us to organize our thoughts and to keep a historical record of what we were up to for the eventual future where we need or want to refer to our own histories.

    I will always encourage blogging, but each person’s decision to do so is up to them. Since you talk about financial concerns, do you have a spare PC? I ran my site from a spare PC from my basement for a few years and it worked great. For what you have said you’re paying in hosting fees for a year, you could get a decent Pi kit and run a site from your own home.

    Thing is, I’d hate to see you go, man. I always read your stuff, disproving your theory that “no one reads this blog”, and I know others do as well. I’d selfishly prefer that you investigate alternatives to paying for hosting if that’s a concern, rather than see you close up on an era of blog posting. I’ve also cut down on the frequency of posts, and have come to terms with the idea of posting When The Spirit Moves Me. I like your recap posts, and even that would be more than a lot of people do.

    Reply

    1. Thanks for all of that…I know you know that sometimes it can feel like we’re the only ones wrangling with these issues and it’s always nice to know that isn’t true.

      I did think about hosting on a local machine but we’re so cramped I couldn’t figure out where I’d put another PC; I hadn’t thought about something small like a Pi.

      But for whatever reason when I switched from a generic shared hosting account to a dedicated WordPress account at my provider, they gave me the new customer rate, so I went from $420 for 2 years to $179 for 2 years which is MUCH more manageable (and that includes a backup service which is like $50 of that price). Maybe in 2 years I’ll go the Pi route!!

      Reply

  2. Obviously, I hope you’ll carry on. Not only is this one of the most enjoyable and entertaining blogs I follow but you’ve tipped me to quite a few things, particularly TV shows, I might not have known about over the years, so it’s in my interest that you keep going!

    Reply

  3. Obviously, I hope you’ll carry on. Not only is this one of the most enjoyable and entertaining blogs I follow but you’ve tipped me to quite a few things, particularly TV shows, I might not have known about over the years, so it’s in my interest that you keep going!

    As for the cost, I don’t know if I’d have carried on all these years if it had been costing me over $400 a year. What is it you’re getting for that outlay that Blogger wouldn’t give you for free, I wonder?

    (This might be my second comment – I had NoScript on when I sent the first one and it said it had gone through but nothing appeared, so I’ve re-commented just in case.)

    Reply

    1. I initially started on Blogger way back in the olden tymes but back then the performance was pretty bad, so I decided to self-host on a new fangled CMS called WordPress. 🙂 As to what it gets me, I guess control would be my only good answer. In theory I could code my own plugins or change up my theme at will. Do I ever actually do any of that? Very, very rarely.

      Now it’s more about the effort it would take to migrate everything!!

      Reply

  4. Just to echo the others — I do hope you keep going, Pete.

    Don’t worry about screenshots and all the rest of it if that’s the bit that kills the fun of it for you!

    Having said that, I hear you. Been in a similar boat of wanting to post more but not actually follow through for a while now. Definitely helps to have just let go of any real concern over the stats and just doing it as I see fit. Renewed for another 3 years start of this year, and no regrets. 🙂

    Reply

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