Terra Extraneus

I have not waded into the blogosphere’s virtual waters very much this year. In addition to my law office responsibilities, I have been busy with other projects, including pastoring a small church, preparing to lead an upcoming missions trip to Central America, and catching up on the first six seasons of 24. Thankfully, my commandant in the law practice, Rod Heggy, has carried the flag of our blogging quest, while occasionally reminding me that this two-man project is increasingly becoming less so.

Rod wrote about “Law Blogging Burnout” in an April 2007 post. Ironically, he wrote that his solution to blogging burnout was to partner up with a former newspaper reporter and editor — yours truly. Hmmm, I wonder how that’s working out for him.

“Blogging burnout” is a malady sufficiently prevalent that Google returns more than 10,000 hits for the phrase. There are “6 Blogging Burnout Cures,” “7 Ways to Avoid Blogging Burnout,” and “12 Ways to Avoid Blogging Burnout.” If only I’d known sooner! All of these gurus advise that one important remedy is to “take a break.” For example:

Time off is necessary for everyone. Taking a week away doesn’t mean that your blog will die. … Time off can be refreshing and inspiring.

Well, if a week off is good for the blog, think what the past 10 months must have done for Terra Extraneus! Perhaps I should feel trepidation about messing up a good thing now.

In his “7 Ways…,” web consultant Ken Yarmosh writes:

Blogging burnout is best exemplified at the point where a blogger is guilted enough to write, “Sorry for not posting in a while.”

Well, I’m not apologizing. And it’s not because I’m a stranger to guilt. I’m just fairly certain that the world has managed to limp along without my bloglines these past few months. If any of you believe I owe you an apologize, please advise in the comments section below, and I will humbly make amends.

I like Chad Everett’s comment the best. In his blog, Don’t Back Down, he writes:

There are times when I don’t feel like posting, and I don’t. There are times when I post multiple times in a day … There are times that I may post on not having anything to post. But in the end, I blog because I like to blog - not because I feel pressure to blog. … I like to get the thoughts out there. I have this vision - misguided though it may be - of making a small mark in the world. Changing it for the better. When I feel inspired, I post. When I don’t, I don’t. I just don’t get the pressure part of it, but maybe that’s me.

I couldn’t catch a clue from studying Everett’s blog who in the heck he is or what he does. But I like his attitude. I’ll tell you this much. He wrote the above words in July 2004. Today he’s still blogging, and he put up a fresh post today.

So OK already. I’m back. Reviewing our TerraX posts for 2007, I see that I ventured back for a few days in May, writing 7 posts in 11 days before disappearing again for these past five months. That’s good news for me. It means that I managed to set the bar so low that I should have little trouble doing better this time around. If I were writing “18 Antidotes to Blog Burnout,” I guess I would put that towards the top of the list, right next to taking long breaks: keep the bar low.

Can I surpass those 11 days of May, persevering for a full two weeks this time? Maybe even a month? Who knows? Anything can happen at the blogateria. I’m sure the watching world is catching its collective breath, anxious to know the answer.