Breaking Keeping up is hard to do.
Emily Dickinson notwithstanding, I suppose that anybody who writes looks forward to being read. I don't complain about a limited readership, and prefer to joke about it rather than try to enlarge it. What's more, I can well understand that what I post here is of limited interest to most people. So almost each month I send out a note telling a small number of people that a new column is available, and have no expectations about their reading it. For a number of years I've quoted part of a blog post from David Weinberger from almost ten years ago in which he deals with the etiquette of expecting to be read. Weinberger notes that with so many blogs being written, it's close to impossible to keep up even with those we really want to read. He then adds, referring to someone who had written disparagingly about blogs:
And then he sort of misrepresents me. The nerve! He says that I announced in an "All Things Considered" commentary that I am no longer reading many of my friends' blogs. Not exactly. I didn’t stop reading my friends' blogs; I gave up on keeping up with them every day. There's a difference: I still read my friends' blogs, just not as steadily as I once did. And, fwiw, my point was that it should be considered rude to assume that anyone has been keeping up with your blog.
I agree. Then again, if anyone has read this column to this point, perhaps beyond my expectations they really are keeping up. Or maybe they're the exception that proves the rule.
Go to: How to write a Boidem column.