Tue 29 Jan 2008
I’m sure you’ve all seen the “you make my day” awards going around lately. It’s sort of like head colds and iPods…all of a sudden, everyone’s got one. Now, I have absolutely nothing against acknowledging the people that we enjoy in our lives. I am all for helping our friends’ blogs take off. In fact, I think that’s the problem. See, every time someone gets awarded, they publish a list of ten blogs that they read, and some of these are inevitably new to me. This is wonderful. I love reading blogs, and especially great ones (and I’ve found some that I really like lately through this very process). The problem is that there’s a “subscribe” button in my Google reader. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where the trouble really starts. I can’t even begin to tell you how out of date the sidebar is that says which blogs I read. I am too busy reading them to look! I have very good stash control, but I apparently have absolutely no new-blog control. I believe that Google Reader just told me that I have 71 knitting blogs that I read daily now. This is crazy. Absolutely nuts. I have to say that many of them are not updated daily, but still. How does one work, knit, blog, and read blogs all in 24 hours? I think I could spend 24 hours doing any one of those things!
This leaves me with a serious conundrum. I really like the blogs I read. And I don’t actually subscribe to every blog I see, either. All of the blogs in my subscribe list are ones that I enjoy reading and find educational. Unsubscribing is like turning my back on a little corner of the knitting world, and I don’t want to do it. But how on earth does one keep up with 71 blogs? I have gotten good at knitting while reading, and I have even managed to knit on Irtfa’a while reading (which is saying something…as I’m sure you remember my struggles with lace charts when I started this project). But even so, with only 4 hours between the time that I get home at night and when I have to go to bed, I am just out of time. And 4 hours is what I get on a good night. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this quarter it’s more like 2-2.5 hours. I guess I make up for that on Saturdays, but with 50 new blog posts every day, I need more than Saturday to keep up. What’s a knitter to do?
I hear you… In fact, I posted on how there never seems to be enough time and where does it all go.
I heard recently of the new term "blog bankruptcy." That's when you mark them all as read and start over. I have done that twice in the past year: after vacation and after Christmas.
Blessings and THANKS for making time to read mine…
I've done that, too, with blogs. I just signed up with bloglines, which is a time-saver in some ways (I don't spend extra time going to my favorite blogs every few minutes, chanting postpostpost), but not in others (when I check the blogs, I decide whether I'm going to read posts I've missed, but when bloglines tells me I've missed several, I sort of feel like I *should* read them). It's a tough juggling act.
Thanks for the encouraging made-it-through class comments! I'm still feeling relieved 🙂
I hear ya!! I have 51 subscriptions on my Google reader, and have gone "Blog Bankrupt" a couple times. But my blogroll on my blog is up to date because I only add those who have added me (those that I know of ;)). And since I only know of 8 friendly folks who link to me, it's easy to keep the blogroll up to date. So my blogroll is more of a "Thank you for linking to me" than a directory of those I read. Perhaps Google Reader can create a RSS Feed of your Feed List! Hahaha – would that be like building "this computer" to work "that computer"? Hehe…