Every Day I Write The Blog: Blaugust

Oh, Elvis. If only you knew. I'm so sorry.

Anyway...

Here we are almost at the end of the first week of Blaugust and the strain is already beginning to show. Not on the bloggers. On the readers.

I'm not entirely sure how many people are officially participating this year. The Anook page lists 129 "followers" aka "users" but I'm far from fluent in Anook. I can't even say "two beers please" and I can do that much in about ten languages.

However many it is it's a lot. More than I can keep up with for sure. I did briefly toy with the idea of adding all the new Blaugust blogs to my Feedly or even my blog roll but even at the start of the month there were over eighty of them and adding all those would almost double the number of active blogs I follow and make my blog roll descend into the second circle of Heck.

Following blogs is no negligible commitment when it comes to time. Well, alright, following them might be - a click here, a cut-and-paste there - but reading them, now that takes a big chunk out of the working day.

Or, in my case, the non-working day, which is, I think, where the problem lies. Toldain, who doesn't seem to have updated his blog for a year and a half, more's the pity, used to go by the by-line "Because reading me sure beats working!" If only!

Yes, if only I could sit at work and read blogs and get paid for it. Well, not for reading them as such, more for being there and reading them while I was supposed to be doing something else. Unfortunately, although I did very much more than my fair share of that kind of thing in the 90s and noughties, it's been a decade and more since I had the benefit of such a cushy desk job.

No, if I want to read blogs I have to do it in my own time. Ditto comment on them. Double ditto write them. With Blaugust in full flood I'm already struggling to keep up with the increased flow from participating blogs I'm following. I'm skim-reading posts I'd normally pore over at length and skipping ones entirely that, in another month, I'd at least be speed-reading. As for thoughtful, pointed or pertinent comments, you can forget that idea right now.

I've also noticed a strange effect on my daily page views. As the week's gone on they've dropped, significantly, which is doubly odd since I've been shadowing Blaugust and posting more than I normally would. At the current rate of decline if I manage to post on all 31 days I should be out of readers by September although I guess I can always rely on my mysterious Russian visitors to keep the lights on.