Slowing Down [Blogging]

I have been pounding my keyboard here for about 10 months now, and it has been lots of fun. I am surprised at how many readers I get--between 500 and 1000 hits a day, and if I am lucky and get a link from one of the "big boys" like Autoblog, I might get double that many hits for a number of days. 500 hits is not many compared to Michelle Malkin, but for a little niche player like me, it is humbling. I can only imagine how much traffic Glen Reynolds gets--I bet he has a Linux server farm all to himself!

Many people don't realize how time consuming blogging really is. It takes time to read what the other people are writing, and unless you only are posting links to other people's stories, anything that requires any thought often takes a long time to compose. I have literally spent an hour writing up some of my longer posts, re-reading them, making changes, and adding supporting links.

So why do people blog, if it is so much work? For some, it is vanity--the thought that hundreds of other people are reading your words and shouting at their monitors that you are an idiot. Some folks probably make a bit of money off of it (Jalopnik, MPH). Some do it to cheerlead for their favorite (Trollhattan Saab, MyFordDreams) team. I'm not making any money off of this gig, so I guess my motivation is vanity--I like having a place where I can spout off my opinion on something someone else said, or wrote, rather than being buried deep in the comments or the "letters to the editor" section.

The real world is calling, however, and I have a long list of things to do piling up on my desk that need attention. So I am going to slow down a bit, and post less often. When I read something that winds me up into a righteous "I know better" tantrum, I'll be here.