I came across this post by Amit Gawande about losing interest in blogging. As someone who has been an on again, off again blogger across all sorts of platforms, I can certainly sympathize. Thank god my livelihood does not depend on it! For me, maintaining a blog is supposed to afford me an outlet to crystalize my ideas, share what I’m learning or working on and hopefully make me a better communicator. But by no means do I expect to build an audience or a following because when I write, it’s for an audience of one: me.
Currently, I am going through another cycle of trying to write more but who knows how long it will last. I may give up in three weeks, three months or three years but since I’m under no obligation to publish anything, I don’t really care. I’ll do it as long as I enjoy it and for Amit, I think, that is key.
Going through some of Amit’s prior posts, it also looks like he’s lost interest in reading blogs which is again something I can relate to. I was an avid user of Google Reader who switched to Feedly upon its demise and, until recently, was a user of Inoreader. But it was getting stressful logging in and seeing the hundreds of unread posts. I just couldn’t keep up. Like Amit, I declared RSS bankruptcy and now only subscribe to one blog: mine.1
I’m sure at some point, I’ll start to fill up my OPML file again but I can see why most of today’s discourse has moved to social media sites. It’s much easier to digest a stream of bite size chunks than clicking through to someone’s blog and reading hundreds of lines instead of characters. But I appreciate those that soldier on so I’ll have something to ponder when my interest inevitably returns.
Hobbies are allowed to come and go. For proof, look no further than my YouTube subscriptions and playlists. It’s like a graveyard of unrealized aspirations: microcontrollers, smoking meat, video games, flash photography, Indian cooking. The list goes on and on!
Life is too short to spend your valuable but limited free time on things that don’t interest you. Do what makes you happy.
Just to ensure that my RSS feed works in case anyone decides to subscribe!↩︎