To blog or not to blog

If you regularly check in with this blog, you have un-doubtedly noticed that quite a bit of time has passed since my last posting. Alas, I have begun to have second and third thoughts about this blog business.

Although I've tried to make whatever I've written about interesting, it all comes down to: my activities, my thoughts and opinions, my recommendations, my complaints, my life. And while I know I have friends out there in cyberspace who are at least moderately interested in not only what's happening with me, but what I think about what's happening with me (they are no doubt the "returning visitors" I see on the statistics page); I'm equally sure that most people couldn't care less. Especially since I rarely do anything exciting, don't report on life's little disasters in an hysterically funny way, don't reveal the sordid secrets of my life or of people I know. There are personal blogs out there that have become famous because their producers give an all but blow-by-blow description of their lives, including fights with spouses, medical procedures undergone, bouts of depression, problems or absurdities at work, etc. I'm much too private a person for that sort of let-it-all-hang-out-approach, and although I've made the occasional complaint about work (usually having to do with putting on library programs, which I DO NOT LIKE TO DO), I am much too self-protective to endanger my job by complaining too much, or too specifically.

As a culture we have become obsessed with knowing the inside secrets of other people's lives. Particularly the lives of "celebrities," whose claim to fame may be something as insignificant as having once appeared on one of the ubiquitous, and wildly misnamed, "reality" shows (there is nothing real, or realistic, about those shows. They are as phony as Pam Anderson's breasts.) And at the same time that we devour news on Tiger Woods' marriage or Sandra Bullock's divorce or Lindsay Lohan's latest arrest, thousands and thousands of us eagerly share with a million strangers descriptions of our kids' recent birthday parties, pictures of throw pillows we've crocheted, how our bedroom looks now that we've repainted it, not to mention political rants, religious exhortations and blah blah blah.

And, despite the fact that I have endeavored to make my observations, and even my complaints, interesting, as well as something that at least some people might be able to identify with, I feel I am doing the same thing as all those other bloggers out there: saying 'look at me, listen to me, pay attention to me.' There is surely something vaguely sad about that.