Bloggers Fading

Screenshot by Stormberry

I think I need to go exploring again, finding new blogs to follow and read, but where should I start? Back in the day (oh yes, do you remember those golden days in 2012 when I used to blog every day?), one of my main sources of daily information was the "to read" segment of my blogger, where the many posts of the different blogs I followed were lined up to be read. It was fun, I must say ^_^. It was like having a little window into the lives of many, many people around the world, where I've got to peer into the tiny windows of their lives, and see what they set on their windowsills.

But then came the draught, and I went away for extended periods of time, hardly even made it back here for the Sabbaths - which are quite important for me, mind you, from an inspirational point of view - and then... then I forgot about my peering window. I must indeed tell you, that breaking time for blogging isn't necessarily easy when you are studying, and working. Of course, it can be done, as so many #studyblr blogs and sites show it, but it got a tad complicated for me. And then I didn't feel like it either, so why force it? There are so many things you have to do - like work and such - that imposing more chore on yourself is completely moronic. Blogging must be a joy, something that flows out of you because you feel like it, because you really want to... not because you have a schedule you feel you have to stick to.

Screenshot by Stormberry

My rutine - like many other things in my life - morphed, and I picked up on another thing I had abandoned a while ago: now my days start with me checking the news on an e-mail address I keep only for newspapers. My days thus fill with news, though curiously I do not read any news from my own countries (have yet to find a newspaper I would trust, which would send me an e-mail with the headlines), and then go on with my day. Blogs and blogging pretty much fell off my schedule, and even when I came around here, I just wrote some and then was off on my way. It wasn't until recently, these days that somehow I was bit again by the blogging-bug, that I noticed again the "to read" list only to notice that all my to-reads come from one source: philofaxy's blog.

Picture owned entirely by Stormberry

My list of followed blogs is extensive, but as I scrolled down on them I noticed that most of them were already quite inactive. Perfectly nice blogs had not been updated in 8 months, a year, five years... what's happening? Is the era of the blogs dying? Are we going to retreat into archaic blogs, maybe kept alive by their thematic nature, and those of us, writing blogs in the shape of personal journals, will retrieve into the safety of paper? As one glances through remaining blogs, they are looking less and less like logs of text, stories and thoughts, and more like websites with lots of pages and segments dedicated to different media, almost building up like online stores where you can purchase whatever things you probably don't need. Even the old journalers are prefering pictures, slowly moving their outpour of ideas into other social networks where words are less commanding, and pictures and videos make the bulk of it.

Are we hating words now? Are we picking a fight or parting ways with words, text, and rather move to what we can quickly consume? And those of us who like to write, string up words and make a longer text, are becoming the old timers? I want to read blogs, personal blogs, blogs from people telling the big, unknown darkness of the internet about their day, about their friends, about their joys and sorrows, their discoveries and rediscoveries. I want to read about the rants of others, stretch my hands through my small cyber window and peer into those other, unknown windows and marvel at the things displayed in those windowsills. I want to feel, to know that across the large sea of dark connections and wavelenghts and optic fibre, through the many submarine cables that mesh the oceans and connect us all, that there's people out there living ordinary lives like mine, but so different from mine.

I want to peer through those many tiny windows again.