Happy TENTH blog birthday to Sean!

I’ve been dealing with blog-writer’s block. I go through this once in a while. It’s inevitable, after all I’ve been doing this 9+ years. Sometimes I feel like I’m out of stories to tell or don’t feel like sharing about new experiences. When I sit down to write a new post, it’s much more difficult than it used to be. I start posts and leave them in a draft folder for months. I talked about this with Sean, a fellow blogging veterano:

Me: did writing blog posts always feel like so much work?
Sean: No. It used to be easy
Me: I know! What happened? I think now I want to be more polished.
Sean: Too many other outlets for expression

I’m on those other outlets. So is he. They have their drawbacks, of course. It’s almost impossible to find an old Tweet and you’re limited to a few characters. Tumblr is frequently down, the search option is trash, archives are unwieldy and the comment function is lacking. I just realized that there’s no way to link to the beginning of a blog. There are all sorts of privacy issues with Facebook, and of course there is no functional archive for the user.

On the other hand, it’s much easier to post a link and say: “Hey read this! Fulanito has a really interesting take on Issue X. What do you think?” If I blogged something similar, I’d probably spend some time taking a chunk of Fulanito’s argument, and sandwiching it between some of my own commentary. I might even look for posts by fellow blogueros who have discussed Issue X and link to their posts. I can’t blog from my phone, but I can send and receive text message updates to Twitter and Facebook, quite useful for when I want to live-Tweet an event.

Still, It all comes back to function and interaction. You don’t need to be my friend or follow me to read my blog. You can just show up, read, poke around in the archives, comment if you like and move on. If you wanted, you could actually go back and see what I was talking about in March 2008 (who remembers la blogonovela?).

I miss my blog and the great things that come with it (feedback and interaction with new and long time readers). I’ve focused on running lately, but that’s mainly for me. I don’t know if anyone cares about my long runs. I don’t intend for this to become a “healthy living” blog where I document every workout, snack and meal. I do want to bring back old features, like “Mil Palabras” photos each Wednesday and the weekly question-centered posts. And of course, I need to get back to what I enjoy most and think I’m okay at, telling stories.

The Persian and Mexica new year is coming up. I can still make some resolutions.