What's On My Mind

Sorry for being away for so long, but I've been sick for the last week or two. Still not feeling 100 percent. Between the situations with Greg, this anonymous spammer, and the numerous people driven away from the blog (despite the traffic actually being higher since I was last in), I am seriously pondering the future of the blog. The irony is that all of these problems were created from within by regular readers rather than from without by random trolls or link-killers.

Thanks to Greg (though I say this without any anger or malice) and the anonymous spammer, my heart currently isn't in blogging right at this moment (though I suspect that will change). It catches me at a bad moment and I will definitely have more to say on the subject once I've thought it over and collected my thoughts (everybody can look forward to an incredibly long essay on the subject).

I had hoped to do something a little different with this blog and I had hoped people who came here would respond in kind. 99.99% of the readers did respond in exactly the way that I was hoping and made blogging a wonderful experience. But all it takes is for 2 people to attack your blog, whether that was their intention or not, in the way in which they did it, to get me to the point of seriously considering the future of the blog.

Oh, well. I'm probably just in a bad mood. Well, sad really. I guess I'm more saddened by the people who have chosen to stay away rather than the people who have stayed. Probably a momentary case of looking at the glass as half-empty. Or maybe it's just the fact that the traffic on the blog always seems to go up when I go away (and drop back down when I come back). I think people prefer it when I'm not here.

Well, enjoy the self-pity party while it lasts. Hopefully, I'll be feeling better soon and my outlook won't be so bleak.

Update: I'm still working on that incredibly long essay concerning the recent (or by now, not-so-recent turmoil in the Request Post) though frankly I can only write about it in small doses. I'm also having some weird trouble reading through the new Blogger. It seems to be producing some very weird characters that make it hard for me to do anything on Blogger at the moment. I still can't figure out what's causing it. That only used to happen when I tried going to Blogger.com without logging in. Now it does it even after I've logged in. (Way to go, Blogger.com!)

But I did want to say that in skimming just some of the comments people have left here and at the Request Post (I'll be reading all the comments more thoroughly at home assuming this weird character problem isn't persistent), I was very moved by what everybody had to say. It does make me want to keep blogging (despite the fact that every time I come in, there seems to be some new frustrating obstacle that Blogger.com puts in my way!). At the moment, I have to say my enthusiasm isn't quite what it should be, but I am feeling a little bit better (health-wise & blog-wise). I wasn't expecting so many comments of encouragement and well-wishes and I have to say that it really makes a difference. As I've always said, the people who come here are really the best! (Even my trolls tend to be nicer here.....anywhere else, they'd say much worse things.)

You guys have really made me feel better about things and for that I thank all of you. (Well, all the people who said nice things, anyway.)

In my absence, I've been mulling over some of the things I wanted to do. While things seemed to have settled down and some (maybe all?) of the people who left are nicely installed at Scorebaby Annex, I still feel bad about the way in which it happened and that they didn't have an immediately available and completely safe haven in which to share and enjoy each other's company (as evidenced by the occasional skirmishes and territorial growing pains with comments and postings between here and there).

Well, I don't know if anybody at this point would be interested, but I've been considering the prospect of creating a separate private blog for just that purpose. It would be specifically for the older readers who enjoyed the community spirit that existed here once upon a time (which is slightly different from the community spirit that exists now). I was thinking of inviting a very small number of people (maybe 10 to 20) and I have the list in my mind as to who I would ask (including some newer readers). It would basically be people who were regular commenters or posters who got along remarkably well. Sorry to all the anonymous people since this would naturally preclude you. Since it would be such a small number of people, we could do things on there that we couldn't do normally (and many things that we couldn't do on a public blog like this one). I still have to research how it could be done, but it wouldn't be susceptible to Google & Blog searches as far as I know, and I have many exciting ideas about what I want to do with it.

I would probably establish it with many Request Posts initially, which would make it unnecessary for me to maintain the blog in the event of my prolonged absence. People could just move onto the next one when one got full. And if some of the people I have in mind are interested, I was also considering giving some people author status which would allow them to make regular posts, if they wanted.

Ironically, when I came online today and I had a little bit of a chance to surf around at some of the things I've missed, I realized this idea is probably very similar (if not identical) to what John Hartigan did with the Soundtrack Lovers Paradise Members Only Club. I wish I had realized this before; it would've saved me a lot of thought on the subject.

Well, I'd still be interested in doing this mainly as a way of doing something for those loyal readers who made this such a wonderful atmosphere in the past (and for the good people who still come here as well). I felt bad that there wasn't a place for the people who left to share things without worrying about unwanted comments and prying eyes.

The only thing that stops me from wanting to do it is the thought that I might be messing something up for Scorebaby. I would hate to do anything that would put a hitch in the wonderful thing that they've got going over there.

Well, if anybody's interested (and the people who would be likely candidates probably know who they are), leave me a comment here or an E-mail so I can tell if it might be worth trying.

And again, thanks to everyone for their kind words and helpful thoughts. You always make blogging worthwhile!

P.S. I just discovered that in order to create invitations for people I have to put in their E-mail addresses. I was hoping to just be able to put in people's nicknames from blogger profiles, etc. Well, if you're interested either leave me an E-mail address or if you don't want post it, leave me a comment and we'll work something out. Thanks!