The LONE Blog RANGER

The LONE Blog RANGER

Here's somebody else's thoughts on my lack of blogging fame. I claim to be casting priceless pearls before the reading swine; other family members suggest I'm confusing dung and pearls. Hmm. Luckily for me my thick wall of narcicism keeps me from actually examining the facts of my fame. JB

Read on Adrian Warnock's blog who references the Evangelical Outpost blog who references the original blog, Catez. And then I reference them.

Blogging without authority and the "anti-success" bias

Evangelical Outpost [says Adrian]pointed me to a great post by Catez who says:

"The Romans built the 1st century equivalent of a highway system throughout the Empire. It meant people could travel faster from one place to another, and therefore news, information and opinion travelled faster too. The Roman roads made it possible to travel to places that a person might previously never travel to. It became not only a faster track for merchants but an information highway and a means of cross-cultural encounters and communication. That was what I was thinking when I started my blog.......

Despite my initial floundering I enjoyed the blog - there were no walls. The highways were there and it was interesting finding the different roads. Now here's what I want to get to - no-one much read my blog for months. I didn't mind. I thought it was fun to gather together links to other bloggers and did it because I liked their blogs and wanted to share the links with others. Trust me, I was nobody. No-one emailed asking me to link them. No-one called me prominent or influential or anything like that. The joy of the lone traveller out on the highway who stops here and there to talk to small groups of other travellers - that was me.

Here's my unconfessed secret - I'm still the same. And the wall I want to push back today is the popularity myth. Recently I've seen posts in which the conclusions drawn are that if more than a certain number of people read a blog, or a blog appears in a certain position on a list of blogs, then this is a popular blog and this is not good. I've even seen comments saying that these popular bloggers are like Pharisees because they are prominent and therefore are not humble. Well it's pointless to set about trying to prove one's humility - proving one's humilty is a contradiction in terms. So let me push back that wall first. Guess what? I'm not humble enough. I'm not loving enough either. I'll go the whole hog - I'm woefully imperfect......"

JB: I confess I wish I was getting 500 reads a day on my blog. That would be nice. Of course as certain family members point out; I'm not actually writing new material, I'm posting new material from other sources. In defense, I could never provide all the insights, great writing, word-smithing and thoughts of the people who's works I post.
I post them because I think they have something to say of great interest. The fact that I post them indicates my belief that they should be read.
Within the first couple of months of starting my blog I put a counter in. But the count was so low I took it out. I couldn't bear to see the count, I was embarrassed to let anybody else see the count either. Maybe, one day, I'll put it back in.
But for now I cheerfully blog in my own -- point to the sources -- way.
" Heigh Ho and Away!" says the LONE Blog RANGER