Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Bloggers block is often about what not to say

I find I often struggle to put content in these blogs and not for the reason one usually thinks.   I have a desire and content to post but the content I can afford to allow into the public eye may be too hard to work around.

For instance, if we have been involved in detailed struggles with an entity and I post about it, I may skewer my future choices if things go sideways.  Once it is over, I may still not want to put it all out there, just in case it comes back on me at a later time.

Sure, I suppose I could rattle on about not sleeping last night, getting up, doing the bathroom dance, eating breakfast (when I do), etc. but those are pretty much what everyone does in their own way… boring stuff.

When we have life happen around us that involves other people I am also hesitant to get into much detail. While I want to be personally connected with friends and family, I don’t want much public access to those relationships.   Again, someone may get hurt and it might turn out that it was me that threw the damaging stones with my view or attitude.

So finding palatable content that is not hum-drum daily fodder for most people, whether they are RVers or not, is not such an easy thing to grab and use.  Sometimes it is just not possible to even mention it.

Any suggestions from you folks are certainly welcome.  If you find some of my content interesting (that does not necessarily mean that you like it) please let me know.  It really should help the progress.

ttfn

Budd

2 comments:

TravelingLongdogs said...

I found you because you posted a Google+ comment on my blog http://travelinglongdogs.blogspot.com/ when I posted about blog renovations. When I unchecked the block that apparently only allowed Google+ comments, your comment disappeared but I found it on my Google mail. Anyway...... I checked out your blog. You have an interesting format. Did you create it by using pages and then putting the page tabs as your main page? I found your RVing posts most interesting but would have liked to see some updates on how things worked out since the posts were older. Based on the post dates, I'm guessing that juggling several "different" blogs is a little overwhelming.

Budd said...

Originally, I responded to Colleen's comment via Google+ to maintain a thread but on a reread I realized that she posted some questions that might be in the minds of some other readers so I have included my response, below:

Hi Colleen. I am responding via G+ to make it easier to follow the thread and also let me update the information we discuss if necessary.

FIrst, Thanks for looking at my blogs and I do agree that I need to keep them more current. Some, like Katie-the-Poo and the HDT blog were created to showcase a specific item rather than to be a journal of ongoing activity.

Actually, in reference to your comment about being overwhelmed by the blogs, I have found it much easier to maintain the content as separate blogs instead of trying to bury all my comments in one or two. The real issue this past 2 years has been some family medical stuff in Florida as well as our forced downsize which began in Jan 2011. As I mentioned in my blogger's Block. post, some things are not useful nor appropriate to share and those kinds of things have been pretty much our life for these past 2 years.

I try to not just post "today's stuff" because I need to but rather, I try to put up filtered content that others might find relevant. It does make for a somewhat "gappy" blog flow compared to many others. For example, Mike and Pat McFall started posting just once a week... every Sunday. Eventually, he started posting twice a week, Sunday and Wednesday, because so many people missed his previous daily posts.

As for how I do my whole blogdom, I used blogger gadgets by going to the dashboard, expanding the options for the HUB blog and then inserting a link gadget to each of the other blogs which keeps a snippet of each on the Hubs page. I rarely change the hub page since these snippet gadgets keep the content updated as I update the subordinate blogs.

The thing I like about this approach is that I can have different templates and layouts for each separate blog to keep them fresh but not the same as the rest. It also makes life simpler for people that just want to follow a particular category, like RV Tech Tips and not have to wade through the more daily-journal content of On the Road and... When.. They can just add the sub blog to whatever reader they use for just the blogs they are interested in and not have to wade through everything.

Yes, blogsearch does help.... some... but only if one has seen certain content and is looking for it, again. One must sort of know what one is looking for before search is of any real help and they may miss other things of that ilk because they don't see it threaded together under the blog's category.

Tags help, too, but years of writing code for search engines made it very clear that individual people think differently and use different words when talking about the same things. Trying to tag everything for everyone is a never ending project and eventually obfuscates rather than clarifies. It is better to let them scan through topically related content and then let their own history provide the "catches" as they seek to peruse specific content.

Again, thanks for your comments and if I can answer any more questions, just continue this thread.
Budd