The Deal With Blogging

April 6, 2005

Clearly the people prefer it when I type something. Google Analytics* informs me that my lapses in prose have been a big blogging faux pas as readership has dropped by half. For those of you who prefer actual data points that means instead of having eight readers on average I've had four. I really do have things I'd like to say everyday, but the past two weeks have been exceedingly packed; first with a trip to Seattle over Spring Break, and then with everything I didn't do over Spring Break because I had the audacity to take a few days off. 

I will attempt to be more consistent again, but I offer this consistency with a few caveats:

1. You must understand that I am nearing the end of daily practice material from 2005. There have already been a few lapses in the past month, but as April progresses into May a woeful inconsistency develops. At that point I had already blown a few days and, in my mind, once I missed that first day the entire project seemed like a failure. When June of 2005 finally dawned I had all but given up. After this imagery dries up I will not be posting every day as I have been since the beginning of 2009. I simply have too many other things that need my attention.

2. I don't think of my blog in the same way that many people think of their blogs. This is not a vehicle for simply regurgitating the present (or recently passed) moment. I have been known to go backwards in time and add posts for events that occurred two years ago: and I've past dated these posts so that they appear in the chronological stream at the appropriate time. As I don't expect anyone to be neurotically checking THE ARCHIVE this really is more about my wanting to consolidate experiences into one life-long narrative. 

And that narrative is very susceptible to my perception of myself at the current moment, which means past posts have been known to disappear once they've fallen out of my favor. Likewise, I'm already considering what posts I'll be future dating to appear like time capsules in fifty years. There's so much potential for shaping one's autobiography with a blog— so many tricks with linear time and narrative that I could see this electronic record becoming the most involved artwork I've ever produced.

3. There are some days when I will just post pictures. It's inevitable. As I enjoy taking pictures and sketching more than I enjoy writing I could foresee some future entries being nothing more than reproductions of the week's photographs or sketches. This may seem like a cop-out, but one of my favorite blogs belongs to an artist who frequently does just that, and I can certainly see the many merits of putting art before documentation, not vice versa.

*Google Analytics is a free online service that allows you to track how many people visit your site, how long they stay, how they got there in the first place (i.e. keywords), and from what geographical location they accessed your site (i.e. LA, California or Tunisia).