Locked in a vacancy

Oh... Fun Tom Leverett has posted some curiosities he as about blogging.

1. do you find that blogging tends to make you frame your life experiences in the same way that carrying a camera tends to make you frame the things you see- it makes you look at everything, and say, i wonder if i could blog about that?

When I was blogging aggressively, I remember actually moving through trains of thought, and lining them up in my mind, and re-affirming them in my memory, with the idea that it would be interesting to post to the blog. And much time in my day was spent(30 minutes) was consumed with thoughts about "blogging it". Then an hour or 2 were spent typing it out.
Now, it was much better Hobby or Recreation/ Way to pass the time than watching T.V.

2. do you engineer your posts in any way to attract more audience? if so, how? do you include words that will attract search engines? do you write posts about hot, frequently-searched public persona?

No, it was only interesting when one would make a pop culture reference, and people would, show up to read it. But the interesting part was how they had gotten to you, and how disconnected that was.... Case in point, I get many hits because I mention bowel movements, and apparently its a searched topic on the Internet, and I get some of those hits..... I do wonder if they are looking for "Secrets to effective bowel movements" or just have a fetish. but since they just search "bowel movements" I'll never know.

Further more, I do know that from my experience, the audience significantly makes the blog. I will blog differently depending on who I either know or suspect is reading. And gear the posts in that direction.... Interesting is my first blog I felt as though no one read, and just posted like I was writing a journal. then it startled me when someone actually posted a comment.

3. do you check who has come to visit you? do you notice what words they used to search and find you? do you notice how long they actually spent on your site? do you take the words they used, and use them again, or keep using them?

I answered this and the previous question like they were the same question roughly.

4. you know how important pictures are when you open up a site. do you choose your pictures in order to hold visitors, or do you just put in there whatever you can? do you look for free pictures, take them yourself, or shamelessly steal them from Google images like everyone else?

Of course I steal them, and information should be free, and pictures assuming I'm not using them for profit. I put pictures in to help people who are more visual, be aided in reading my blog. and it's interesting to Google image search random words and phrases, that are thematic with my post.

5. do you feel bad about bumping people from your blogroll? how important is a template to you when you visit blogs? do you really admire people who list thousands of blogs over there, or would you rather see someone who just has maybe ten or twelve best friends and relatives?

I'm to lazy to bump people from blog rolls, but when destructive processes happen, I just don't add them again.... and if they don't comment, or read your blog, why should they be on your blog roll.

6. do you really visit all those blogs you list under "daily reads" or "blogs i visit?" do you read them? this seems like a herculean task. how much time can a person invest in being in the citizen's media, a regular?

I have a RSS feed reader, and it makes this process very efficient. I have a list of the blogs I read, then the News sources I read, and the subsections of those news sources that I read.
Throughout the day, I read all the new posts of the blogs I frequent, followed by skimming through all the financial business news, followed by major general news stories, then politics, then cycling. As my day ends I take some time to catch up on a brief summary of the K-Fed, or Bradjalina, or whatever mindless entertainment news there is. I have so much news flowing in, I have to prioritize it based on the amount of available time I have.

All of this is after I wake up drink 2 quarts of water, make coffee, have breakfast, and read my local paper.(fortunately I usually have already read over half the paper the day before, since most local papers are just AP newswire stories anyways.)

7. has blogging changed your writing? your perspective? your alliances? your likes/dislikes? your politics? how has it affected the way you see things?

It does give me a chance to write and collect my thoughts during the day, it's almost a zen like process, blogging... ok, more a precursor to meditation... The interesting thing is that it does lead to some amount of accountability, in what I write. My bullshit has been called numerous times, and rightly so.

Eric