i started writing this a few days ago (when it was more timely). if i actually finish and publish this post it will be the first time anything i save as draft ever saw the light of day
a while ago i concluded that it would not be any fun to be a big name blogger--you know, one of those sites that gets as many daily hits to rival the circulation of major print publications. if i had that much of an audience, blogging would not be fun anymore. it would turn into a kind of responsibility and i don’t need more responsibilities right now. i even once wrote "i'm not trying to be the next atrios" at one point last may. so i was caught completely by surprise when i got the email inviting me to be a guest poster.
there is something a little odd about the concept of a guest posting at a blog like eschaton. atrios has built an audience for himself based entirely on the credibility of his voice. the site is atrios, it reflects him in a way that cannot be duplicated by anyone else. just as, i suppose, this site reflects me.
in fact, i view my site as a personal thing. (though not a private thing--i am posting it on the internet, after all) i have a hard time ever imagining inviting a guest blogger here. what would be the point? whatever they wrote would not be me and thus would not really reflect this site,
anyway, i decided to give it a try and here's my reflections on my week in the spotlight:
(1) i felt a lot of responsibility towards the site.
i'm not saying that this place isn't important to me, but when you get down to it, i really don't give a shit if i don't always make sense, or make stupid spelling or gramatical errors here (in case you haven't already noticed). this is my forum to get stuff off my chests, and maybe provoke a discussion in the comments over it. when duncan emailed me inviting me to guest post he specifically told me not to feel any responsibility towards the site. but i couldn't help it. all my posts took a lot longer to write, i didn't feel like just pounding out stuff like i do here. i even used caps over there. and because of that (not the caps, the other stuff) each post took a lot longer for me to write than the stuff i write here.
(2) i felt a responsibility towards the comments
that is not at all different from how i feel towards the comments on this site. when someone argues with me about what i write, i feel like i have a responsibility to write back if it calls for a response. that's not a non-fun kind of responsibility. i actually like arguing. but i feel i owe it to whoever wrote the comment. at eschaton, where a post could generate 300 comments, it was impossible to respond to 99% of what people wrote. i usually didn't even read most of the comments. i simply didn't have time.
(3) it took up too much time.
i don't know how the big named bloggers do it. actually, i don't know how i managed to post as much as i did. during the same week i was posting, i had a major brief deadline at work, various family obligations for thanksgiving, my 35th birthday, my usual load of arabic homework, and a couple of social commitments. it happened to be a particularly busy week for me even if you exclude eschaton.
(4) i got a ton of email.
this was partly my fault. when i first got the posting invite, i feared that i might not be able to come up with anything interesting to write about. so i asked various friends to send me ideas. almost all took me up on it, plus a couple of people i didn't know started writing to me. i ended up with a huge backlog of emails, most of which i never replied to (sorry) and, as it happens, i only posted one idea that was emailed to me. sorry again. most of the emails were good ideas, i just was swamped.
ak, i'm out of time now. i probably was going to write more, but i'm losing faith in my original concept here. so this is going up as is. if you don't like it, tough
