The illusion of silence

I've always been a sporadically prolific blogger. I've gone through periods of time where I've blogged daily, but that usually only lasts a few days in a row. Every once in a while I'll blog more than once in a day, which is usually when I'm feeling particularly wordy. More often than not, and of course most recently, I haven't blogged much at all, which makes it appear as though I've gone silent. This, however, is just an illusion. For example, during the time period between my last blog post and this one, I have tweeted approximately 180 times. I've also typed thousands and thousands of words into Skype, AIM, IRC and Signals, our internal microblogging product. I'm not silent at all. So why the blog silence?

I suppose it's because I no longer use my blog as an outlet for small ideas and comments - I use Twitter for that. I don't use it to bitch about my day - I use the group chats I have with my friends on Skype for that. I don't use it to share hilarious links with my friends - I use Twitter or AIM for that. I don't use it to talk about work - I use Signals for that, and this particular blog (unlike several past blog iterations) is my personal blog, on which I rarely discuss work anyway. It's not that I'm lacking inspiration or topics, just that I either have other outlets for them or I don't have the time or inclination to flesh them out into longer posts.

This isn't a problem that's new to blogging - in fact, when I first started blogging, after the initial honeymoon period of realizing that I had my very own self-publishing platform on which I did not have to censor myself or cater to anyone else's approval, my posting frequency was erratic at best, and I know that many other bloggers run into the same issue. I have no solution to this problem (and I don't really know if it's even a problem!), so I need some ideas.

So what motivates you? What gets you to flesh out tweets into posts, or take that idea you talked about with your friend via instant messenger into a full-on blog post? What keeps you posting often, and more importantly, what do you do when you hit a dry spell and can't come up with anything to blog about?

Comments

[Jeff Donaldson]

I started responding, and then I realized it was turning into a blog post of it's own, so here is my response: http://www.fejsez.com/2010/02/28/a-response-to-the-illusion-of-silence/

[francie]

I used to blog to keep my kids' families up to date with what was happening since we're so far away.
Then I mostly stopped doing that and just blogged the oddities of every day island life.
Once that line of stories felt boring, I mostly stopped blogging, also cause everything I felt was somewhat meaningful, had already been shared with people on skype group chats, Twitter or Facebook.

I was just about to shut down my blog when I figured out when I needed to blog and what I needed to blog about.
The only time I blog now is if I see a repeating theme or message, a conversation I have with different people, over and over... about something that's bigger than can be shared in a group chat... that's the only time I blog now.