Dwindling...

Just my luck that when I come up for air, there’s nobody around.

Either everyone has found something more interesting to do with their summer days than sit in front of the computer….

Or no one is the slightest bit interested in my political opinions.

::Sigh!::

That’s the drawback of this hit and miss ethereal “community.”  People appear and disappear…fade in and out of the woodwork.  And I just let them go.  I’ve never been an “in your face” kind of friend.  Never been one to pursue people if I feel they’re headed away from me.  It’s a combination of my natural reserve and the lessons my birth order taught me.  I’m the youngest…the “baby.”  From the time I was little, I knew that if my presence was desired, my sisters would come get me.  Conversely, if I was not invited to be part of an activity, it was because I was aggressively  not welcome.  Like as in, “Beat it, you little brat!”  So I learned to just…wait for other people to come to me.  Always assuming that if they didn’t make the first move, they didn’t want me.  No amount of telling myself that I’m a big girl now and “you have to be a friend to get one” can undo that early imprinting and give me the courage to barge into people’s lives.  Because that’s what it feels like to me.  Poking my nose somewhere where it’s really not wanted.  Yes, I know that’s utter bullshit, but it is what it is.

So I’ve sucked at “community” all my life.  I’m not interesting or charismatic enough for people to come flocking to me,  and I’m just not going to walk up to people and say, “Hi! My name is Lisa.  You want to be my friend?”   The sidelines have always been my neighborhood.  I’m the quintessential wallflower.

Then you have to ask yourself, what’s the point of a wallflower having a blog?  Having a blog is all about cultivating a readership, right?  And if you’re not going to go out there and promote yourself, how are you going to get any readers?  And if you don’t have any readers, who the hell are you writing to?

Good questions, all.  I can only say that, in the early days of AOL journal land, the pool was small enough that you picked up readers more or less by accident.  We were all out there, searching through the relatively tiny community, looking for people who shared our interests or had something engaging to say.  Some of us picked up a couple dozen regular readers…  Some of us connected with hundreds.  Those with the hundreds of readers probably aren’t around anymore…they either burned out or went on to greater things, perhaps aided by the ad-inspired AOL exodus of a couple years ago.

I was one of those with the couple dozen faithful readers.  We were “friends.”  We read each other’s journals, cheered each other’s successes, gave out virtual hugs by the hundreds, gave counsel when needed.  And I suppose it’s pretty amazing that I still have contact with two or three of that original group.  But we’ve all gone through changes in the last five years, changes that have reshaped the role of the blog community in our lives.  Children, grandchildren, career swaps, bereavements, accidents and relocations…  The virtual community does not adequately roll with all those changes, at least for most people.  They turn to the flesh and blood connections in their lives when things get tough.  For those of us (those of me?) for whom blogland has been the ONLY community in the past five years…well, it’s gettin’ kind of empty out here.

At least once a year, when I sit down at the computer to write and I understand that my words will touch fewer and fewer eyes or hearts, I do this little reassessment.  I think hard about whether it really is worth it anymore.  Because, to be honest, though I don’t live or die by the comments or the hit counter anymore, it’s still a bummer when you write something you’re particularly proud of, and no one reads.  Especially now, when I have so little time or energy to direct toward this thing I love most in the world.  It’s that much more special (to me) when I manage to string two coherent sentences together.  And that much more of a disappointment when no one responds.

It boils down to two questions:  Why do I still do this?  Should I still do this? 

And every time, the answer is pretty much the same.  I write because it’s what I do.  And I write here because, well, why not?  I just can’t go back to writing stuff that I KNOW no one else is going to read.   Here in my little public space, I can continue to entertain the fantasy that some other person in the world will read what I write, even if it’s by accident.  Though that won’t ease my nostalgia for the community that has come and gone, it’s enough to keep me here. 

And, come to think of it, it’s what brought me here in the first place.