Prepoceros

Blogging, like many things, is subject to inertia. When I’m chugging along at my usual pace of four or five posts a week, I can summon up the motivation most days to write a little somethin’-somethin’—an overheard conversation, tales of appalling grammar, or a gushy-mom update on the continuing preciousness of my sweet widdle shnuffle-pumpkin*.

Once a week slips by without a post, though, it’s so easy to fall into the one-more-day-won’t-hurt mentality. I’ve half-composed several posts in my head during the last month, but I don’t even remember what most of them were about.

Somewhat-unexpected developments in my personal life** since spring break have distracted me (not-unpleasantly) from blogging and from Teh Internets in general. I haven’t posted a YouTube video in a couple weeks and haven’t watched any videos at all in at least a week, which you’d think was absolutely bongoballs nuts if you knew how many hours I used to spend there DAILY.

Somehow the video comments and subscriptions keep trickling in; every time I open my email inbox I find three or four new notifications that someone’s stumbled across my videos and found me worthy of their subscription list. Whereas earlier I would’ve jumped at each one of these and scrambled over to the site to revel in the interactiveness of web video, now I sigh and click “Mark as Read.” I think of all the time involved in making videos, watching other people’s, commenting, thanking new subscribers…and right now it seems like more of a hassle than I want to deal with. I guess YT has its own sort of inertia, one bolstered by the attention-demandingly quick pace of “life” there: when you’re caught up in the melee, you have to be up-to-date on every new development and can’t imagine letting videos go unwatched, lest you miss out on being one of the first few to comment on a friend’s video or joining a chain of video responses, but when you step back, it all blurs together.

I think this marks a turning point in my YT experience—somewhat appropriate, I suppose, for my one-year anniversary coming up in a couple weeks. The initial excitement and total absorption in the site have died down. It’s taken longer for me to get over that enthusiasm than most people; I’ve watched many of my favorite vloggers “take breaks” after a few months. Some return, some don’t. Most, if they didn’t leave under pressure of some scandal or major personal problems, pop back up eventually, often in a more-reserved style. They’ll post every other week instead of every other day, reveal less of their personal lives, and not follow as much YT gossip.

I’m heading down a similar path, and I think I like it. I’ll still be posting videos and comments regularly for the foreseeable future, but at a more leisurely rate. I plan to pare down my now-101-strong susbcription list. I won’t spend every evening following never-ending trails of video responses. I will never be a “powerhouse” on the site, but I’ve got my own little corner, my own set of friends, my own collection of unconnected niche topics, and that’s fine by me. Because there’s this “real life” thing? And it’s, like, kind of awesome.

Well then. I didn’t intend this post to be about YT at all, but there you go. Another dimension of the inertia: you think you have absolutely nothing to write about…until you start writing. Well begun is half done and all that. Okay, so that’s true of writing in general, not just blogging, but I don’t do much unassigned writing otherwise.

Oh, and wanna know how many comments had piled up in the moderation queue before I flushed it out this afternoon? Two thousand sixty-eight, every last one of them spam. If anyone’s in the market for cheap insurance, phentermine, gambling, or hot milf action, I got your hook-up.

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* He’s splayed out on the couch behind me, dreaming and twitching, with his little pink tongue sticking out a precious quarter-inch.

** His name is John.

Tags: blogging, YouTube

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.