I know it’s bad form for a blogger – especially one who maintains a community site – to go incommunicado, but my day job has had me on a deadline from hell for the past several weeks and certain other important things have gone a little janky, so I decided to go MIA for a while so I didn’t end up lighting someone on fire. I finally reached the finish line this past Wednesday at work, so hopefully things have quieted down for awhile.
Things will be back to normal on Monday, but I have to confess to you all that I’m not sure how much longer IB will go on. This is for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I’m not sure I’m doing enough for all of you. That’s a conflict, because on one hand I want to do what it takes to make IB well-known enough where you’re reaching a wider audience every time you get published, but on the other hand, I’m a blogger just like you and don’t really have much more time than anyone else does. Without advertising and the other things that I wanted to keep away from IB, I have created a situation where the site simply cannot grow without a concerted consistent effort of word-of-mouth and encouragement of others to submit who may not know about the site. And most of you do that already when you post something on your blog that you’ve been published to IB, but somehow there just needs to be more of something. I just don’t know what that something is. It’s difficult, because I’ve seen so many things explode in the blogosphere that don’t really help anyone and certainly don’t do much to inspire a person. Does IB need a schtick? Whether it does or does not, I don’t know that I’m willing to change who I am and what I want the site to be for IB (or my personal blog, for that matter) to explode.
I don’t know. I suffer from Blog Identity Crisis on my own blog from time to time because I’m sort of an all or nothing person. For instance, on my personal blog, if I feel that no one is reading or my writing has become fossilized dog shit, I want to stop. Completely. FIN. Better to go out on a positive note than with desperation and reluctance. Is this that? I don’t know. I’d like stats to be higher. I’d like for IB to “catch on” more than it has for lack of more elegant words, but I don’t want to sell out. Right now it feels that the only way I can get what I want is to become a blog whore and I’m not really comfortable with that at all. I like for things to mean something.
I need to know that this means something, and while I know that the most important indicator of meaning is all of you who submit, read and support the site, numbers help define meaning as well. So, I’m sort of at a loss.
Anyway, I wanted to let you all know my thoughts about IB and its future and that I’m sorry for my absence and lack of attention this week. If you have any thoughts you want to share, you’re welcome to e-mail me or post to the forums.
Posting will resume Monday. Have a great weekend, all.
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