This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Suspended Blog

As I look around the blogosphere, I note that many are giving up on blogging or are suspending their blogging. I also notice some musing sorts who rigidly discipline themselves to three blogs a week. I'm particularly stung by this, because as I look on the spate of blogging I've engaged in over the past five months, I see that it was not unusual for me to have a couple of entries each day, and since the election a month ago, I've averaged more along the order of three a day, often posting four or five.

Can you say logorrhea?

I have used as my excuse in the past that writing like this is good for me. I like to do it. It affords me the opportunities to shape my thoughts around a topic. And so forth. But as the glutton is disgusted with himself in the aftermath of his excess, so I sit here today not at all pleased with the volume of my posts.

There seem to me to be two roads to follow: 1) full and complete suspension (for a yet-to-be-determined period) or 2) a discipline such as the crowned-one's musing to the tune of three days a week. Given my personality, there is much to be said for the latter, as it would be more challenging and much more difficult.

But it would also be much easier to make excuses for breaching the discipline. Oh, just one more post today--it's an important one. Or: I know this is Tuesday, but this is too important to wait. Well, you know the drill.

It's not so much a matter of stewardship of time. Though it may not look like it, I neither take time away from my family, nor infringe on my work time illegitimately. (Hint: think early morning/late night writing into a word-processor, then cutting and pasting. Some stuff is ad hoc, but less so now than used to be the case.)

No, it's just a nagging feeling I have. One that keeps coming back from time to time. I should not blog as much as I do, sez that inner voice.

In certain ways, there has become a sort of self-absorption about the whole thing. It's one thing to like what you've written in terms of content and structure. But it's a whole 'nother thing to reread that post for the umpteenth time and revel in it's (to me) deliciousness. Something very Gollum-like going on here. And that disturbs me.

It would seem then, that I'm in very dangerous spiritual territory. A narcissistic myopia has led not a few to damnation.

I'll post the remaining two entries in the "O Antiphon" series of posts I'm doing, of course. But being the ruminative sort that I am, if I think on this too much, or delay action, I will think myself out of it.

So: Bye for now.

Posted by Clifton at December 10, 2004 04:47 PM | TrackBack