Changing Everyday

I'm amazed at how people who follow this blog can tell when I'm too busy to blog. (Many thanks for all the kind emails!) When I first started blogging I believed that as long as I blog at least once a week my blog would remain active. My understanding is/was that any blog that is not updated regularly cannot be attractive enough to pull in loyal readers.

Blogs that are updated daily (and sometimes more than once daily) tend to overwhelm me. I either start skimming through them, with the risk of missing something I would have otherwise read closely, or simply stop following them. I will be forever amused by the number of blogs that come and go. I am particularly tickled by blogs that start out as if they're the greatest thing in the blogosphere to then simply sit there untouched for months and months. Just have a look at the blogs listed by aboutmalta.com and you'll see quite a few of these. Striking the right balance seems to be quite an acrobatic act.

The idea of blogging as a navel gazing exercise doesn't bother me. We all have our own ways to filter through the bellybutton fuzz. Still, socially engaging blogs, or at least the occasional entry in this vein, keep the Maltese blogosphere vibrant. The current campaign against the GWU president is one of the best examples of this sort of thing. Racism and the immigration situation in Malta could seriously be the main issue for the next general elections. I'm not sure how things will pan out because this is not as clear an issue as the removal of VAT (1996), political [in]stability/mediocrity (1998) and accession to the EU (2004).

On a less melodramatic note, blogs as chronicles of the blogger's thoughts on life and the universe still make sense to me. Although I am not particularly keen on diary-like entries about what's what in the life of whoever, I thoroughly enjoy reading and writing about significantly happy/sad moments.

Anyway, I'm off to New York again this weekend. The physical distance doesn't bother me as much as the psychological distance between where I am now and where I'll be spending next week. I have a feeling I'll find some time to blog about that while I'm there. Another academic conference is on the agenda for next week as is an updated book proposal for Franklin Furnace. Yet, if you know me, you know that my most cherished moments will involve being home with my monkey and my dog...and it's not the last time this year either.