Where I light and where I write

Today's post is about the blogosphere and about how we come to join certain groups of writers. But it is more about how it is that all of us manage to continue writing, and how often it is very hard to do so. Perhaps todays post came up because the Ides of March happened. The soothsayer says with foreboding, "Beware of the Ides of March" in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The day (March 15) is just one of a dozen Ides that occur every month of the year. But that was about the time I began to feel resistant to posting at my political website.

South by Southwest, etc. My fourth year blogiversary at S/SW will be on March 29, 2009. I have written 1270 posts there. And I have been feeling a bit of burnout lately. I also maintain two other sites. Making Good Mondays, a creative and nonpolitical webpage, was begun on 11/16/05. And Behind the Links, a political collaboration with three blog friends (Betmo, Dan'l and Jon), was started only recently on February 6 of this year. I have been cross-posting at several group blogs for quite a while. I have really enjoyed the different kinds of communities they represent. Probably the longest association began almost as soon as I went online:

TPM Cafe: I have been posting at TPM Cafe for several years, off and on. It is a part of Josh Marhall's big website, to which I returned after a couple of protracted absences. "They say this is how it is supposed to work" was a recent cross-post to TPM. It is one of a number of my recent posts that did not work as I would have liked. I realized that it was not one of my better efforts when I cross-posted it and it got no comments and recommended but once, unusual for this group. As a result, I took it down, something I almost never do.

The Reaction: Michael J.W. Stickings, who edits The Reaction, also posted over at TPM Cafe. That is where we "got acquainted." coincidentally, we each started our own blogs on the same day, March 29, 2005. We began exchanging e-mails in February of 2006, and I was invited to become a co-blogger in May of 2007, and an assistant editor in October of that year. Michael's first post was called, "Fiat Lux: The Reaction Begins." The site now has accumulated 6660 posts. My first post at Michael's blog was, "An idea whose time has come," written on June 7, 2007. " The Reaction in review" series I write for the blog began on September 12, 2008. As the years have passed I realized I do not get nearly as many comments there as I did early on. In fact comments are down for all of us from the level when we all first began. Michael's Sunday post, "My weekend," from which I quote, echoes some of what I was also feeling this weekend.

I apologize for my lack of posting this weekend [various things] . . . kept me from blogging, and, on top of all that, I've been battling an annoying cold for the past week or so.

And, somewhat tired of what I've been writing about lately, I think I just needed a couple of days off to relax and refresh.

I'll be back at it tomorrow, though -- and of course there will be much more from the co-bloggers, who continue to make this blog so much better than it ever could have been had I kept it a solo project.

So stay tuned for new posts. And enjoy the rest of your weekend.

The Siren's Chronicles -- In May of 2008, through my blog friend Betmo, I became a (Tuesday Featured) "Siren" at Sirens Chronicles, cross-posting there at least once a week. I got an e-mail this morning from Dusty, the editor, that the site has been hacked. All of our posts have disappeared from the site's remaining template. A few comments survive. Dear Dusty's poignant e-mail puts it this way:

I checked the site tonight, as I always do and found that someone has hacked the site.

All posts are gone...poof. It's like Sirens never existed. All that is up is the template.

I don't know what to do. . . I am very upset, I don't know if I can fix this.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

It has been a tough period for my friends and I, far tougher for some than others. I have not felt my writing is up to par. My linking collaborators have been challenged. Betmo was on a self-imposed news blackout for some weeks around the holidays. Jon's e-mail was traumatically out for a few days recently. Michael needed the weekend off. Dusty, the Siren's, Chronicles were expunged. These experiences were wide ranging in level of difficulty. I am amazed at the convergence of our experiences and the inter-connectedness of web communities. So here we are, all in it together at various levels. I feel sure that this little vignette occurs all the time in one version or another in blogger communities all over the world.

Good news update: Dusty reports that she has been able to restore the site, except for the graphics. She wants us all to post to make sure we are back in business. Yippee!

Carol Gee - Online Universe is the all-in-one home page for all my websites.

Technorati tags: blogosphere blogging news writing community psychology

My brand new blog is called "Behind the Links."