… over a year since I decided to write something. Not in my daily life. No, I still write quite a bit – both personally and professionally. But when it comes to blogging, I just haven’t bothered.
Truth be told, as I have said on this site and when someone asks me, I have more or less lost my mojo when it comes to doing the whole blog thing. So many people decided to get into writing on line stuff, a great many of them looking for a hand-out, free products, samples and whatnot. Writing this used to be fun. It used to be something I loved doing because I could share what was going on in my life and I did it not because I knew people were reading it, but because I really loved it.
I was younger (in my 20s and early 30s) when I really kicked this bitch into high gear. I won’t go as far to say I was one of the front-runners when it comes to social media, but I was doing this before it had a name. There was no Facebook, no Twitter… none of that. I just wrote about whatever came to mind and I didn’t care who read it or what people thought.
Now it seems “bloggers” are all brand-sensitive – both of their own ‘brand’ and whatever they can get from companies. And suddenly PR agencies and marketing departments are more than aware of bloggers. Ten years ago you’d be laughed out of the room if you were a blogger and you tried to pass yourself off as media. Now if you have over 2,000 followers on Twitter, update your ‘blog’ with posts about the shit you try, you too can be a makeshift media personality.
The really funny thing is if you tell someone that you write a blog, most of the time they will think you’re in it for the stuff. If you tell them that it’s just a normal site, they don’t believe you or they won’t bother reading it. Our world moves too fast these days for people to come back daily and read a blurb from someone telling you what she did this week.
And before you think “Oh Zoey’s bitter that the landscape has changed. She wants free crap too.” I can assure you that’s not it. As a journalist and a writer I’ve had my share of swag over the years. This is more about how I wish things could go back to the way they were. When blogging wasn’t a business and people just did it for fun.
People like Teena in Toronto are hanging in there as bloggers who write about their daily lives, and thankfully she’s still doing her thing. I for one never thought I would say this, but the first decade of the new millennium was far better than this one is. Sure, we as people were just getting used to the 2000s, but all things considered, even with garbage like reality shows coming into popularity, Paris Hilton and the questionable “media credibility” of blogging and social networking, things were still better.
So yeah… that’s how I feel. That’s why I just don’t have the energy or personal motivation to do this anymore really. Although apparently I can knock out a good rant when I feel like it. Maybe check back in a year or so and see if I have anything else to say.
UPDATE: And yeah… I change the look again… I do that every so often. I figure since I’m only here once a year, I might as well make things look different.
Zoey Castelino 