Blogged down?

I'm getting the feeling that no one is reading my blog anymore. (Please, I'm not looking for validation, here. Read on.)

Which ironically frees me to start saying the things I want to say again. To be obsessive about business. To complain and grump about the customers. Things I backed away from when I thought people were reading.

For years and years, I wrote a business journal, which -- when I started blogging, I just transferred online; minus a few of my more mordant gripes. So, as obsessive as it probably seems to most people, I'm sort of back to obsessing about the daily in's and out's of my business.

It was interesting to talk about the local economy and the idiocies of local government and media for a couple of years; but, hey, it was a little bit of a wacky community in the local blogs for awhile and easier to feed off the feedback.

Those crazy guys seem to have disappeared; and more often than not, these days, I'll read something in the Bulletin and instead of writing a mocking or outraged comment, I kind of sigh in exasperation. Where do I start? Oh, why bother....

It's just enervating to watch the same mistakes happening again and again.

Too many blogs I read are just a little too polished; every hair in place, teeth blindingly white, not a wrinkle in their shirts. Just a little manicured and mannered for my taste. I prefer a little casual clumsiness, and or unexpected reveals, and or reality -- not just a burnished image.

Of course, I do that too. But I try to let a little candidness slide in once in a while. I figure, what's the harm?

This is more or less why I stopped looking at my traffic stats....I knew it would affect me too much. I'd want approval just a little too much. I'd tailor my posts for the most effect. For the day when I'd be writing for myself again, I wanted to be sure I was writing for myself.

I enjoy the process of writing, as much as anything. Where the words comes from, where they go, and in why they come out in the order they come out. Really, the essence of writing. A blog allows me to free flow, the experiment, to try out different angles. What works. What doesn't.

Don't know if this will be helpful to my fiction writing if I really ever get going again. But it probably doesn't hurt.