June 18, 2004
I FEEL HIS PAIN
The following quote is from megablogger Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless:
If you think about it, a traffic jam on a 10-lane highway is actually an indication that a lot of things are working extremely well. Before that can happen, you have to have 10-lane highways, and you have to produce so many cars and so much fuel and sell them at a price low enough that there would be enough people owning cars and driving them to overload that 10-lane highway. It's an example of a problem a lot of people in the rest of the world would have loved to have had. (It's like the way a lot of bloggers feel less than sorry for me when I complain about all the mail I get because of the popularity of this site, and they have a point.)
The piece it's from is interesting, but it's not what I wanted to write about. I'm looking at that parenthetical comment.
I used to work very hard at increasing my site traffic. I'd enter 2 or 3 link-fests every week, and go out of my way to hit up the big guys like IMAO, Misha, and Matty O'Blackfive (by the way, Matt, Happy Blogiversary) for links (you'd be surprised how far a tip jar hit goes), and I'd obsess over my Ecosystem ranking and traffic numbers.
But after a while, I discovered that I couldn't answer all my e-mail in a timely manner any more. And I had a lot of unwatched DVD's laying around the house. And Beloved Wife was becoming sad, lonely, neglected Beloved Wife.
Plus I didn't have time to write about all the things I wanted to write about, which was really a drag.
Basically I discovered I didn't want to be a megablogger, because the price of doing that is losing touch with the people I care about - family, friends, fellow bloggers, friendly blogless commenters, and, frankly, myself.
Maybe the big guys get used to ignoring large swaths of their e-mail. A person can get used to just about anything, I suppose. But somehow I don't think it's something I'd enjoy getting used to. I'd rather stay in touch.
You just need minions, Harv. Get some evil midgets or something like that to answer your emails for you. Okay, there is a negative side (I mean who can really trust an evil midget) but the plusses totally outweigh the negatives.
(Is "evil midget" redundant?)
I agree with you. It is not nor would it be something I strive for. It's all about balance. Just like I never had goals to be the CEO of the company I worked for. Those people have no lives... all they do is work, sleep, eat, breathe that corporation. I wouldn't want a blog to take over my life. Then again, perhaps these big bloggers have found ways to balance it all. To be that big though, I think it would be quite a task. It would be interesting to know how they manage it all.
E-Mail Me (Harvey)
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