The End

Year End: Death of the Blog?
So it is year end and I am running to the end of what was to be a one year experiment. Conclusions at the end of the year or perhaps better stated observations at the end of the year:

1. Blogging is an intentional effort at self involvement and is a very loud scream of “LOOK AT ME! LISTEN TO ME! This is less then healthy.
2. Writers write as they say and writing is hard work. Spewing out whatever is on your mind and not editing for content or form is less hard.
3. Some of the interesting things are too hard to blog about.
4. I am a bad blogger in that I have been made to understood that a good blogger reads other people’s blogs 3 times more then he or she writes and links their blog to related blogs creating a “community”. I already have a community in real life and I think as I have shown, other peoples opinions tend to be of little interest to me.
5. The best things I write take the least time. An example would be the Christmas letter which was ripped off in a 1/2 hour at 30 thousand feet on the way home from California.
6. My opinions regarding music and books are eclectic enough so as to be of very little interest to “the world.” (and sometimes even to me).
7. It is sometimes cathartic but still takes a lot of time.
8. I did not review enough diners.

So what to do? Keep on in the same vein? There are numerous diners in the area still to be catalogued and reviewed. New music, new concerts, new political developments and books but... who cares? A few thoughts and I will solicit comments either on the blog or by emails at Wantonbecker@gmail.com.

A. Keep on keeping on.
B. Change format: We could for example convene a board of diner reviewers and pick one per month and have a rigid format for review. Perhaps these people would be interesting.
C. Change format: Ignore diners. I have always wanted to do St. Louis Dive Bar Review but I do not think that aids my marriage or my life.
D. Change format: Do only reviews of concerts, books and movies (it has been done to death by better writers).
E. Change format: Try and write book on line over the course of a year.
F. Change format: Some other way you clever people might suggest.
G. Quit and get on with otherwise meaningless life.

All of these are thoughts... not necessarily good thoughts but thoughts. I do not know where to go with this. It was an act of discipline making myself write on a fairly regular basis about whatever I could make myself write about. I plan on printing the whole mess out and seeing how it looks all collected together. I think that it will, when all collected be a grammatically and stylistically painful mess of nothing but the process is sometimes worth more then the final result. We will see.

So I am thinking about it and welcome comments and thoughts. An interesting year as they all seem to be. So if you have thoughts let me know. Likely I will do whatever I want as that is my prerogative. I assume I will see you all next year but in the meantime have an awesome New Year!