This evening I have been venturing out on the the “internet at large”. You probably have visions now of me sneaking along the side of the internet high street in a long coat with the collar turned up. In reality, I have been sat in front of the computer in deepest, darkest England, on a hunt for new blogs.
While catching up on the various feeds I try to read earlier this evening, it occurred to me that I had not actively sought out new and interesting stuff for quite some time. I have also become aware that the people I have marked out for inclusion in my select little corner of the internet are not posting as often as I might like them to. I want something of interest to read each day dammitSo. I wondered what might be a good strategy for sneaking out across the information superhighway, and possibly landing on something worth reading. “Information Superhighway”… when did you last hear that term? 1992? My hastily devised strategy went something like this;
“If I go to visit one of the more well written blogs on the internet, it stands to reason that they probably read well written blogs, and advertise those they read regularly”. Quite why I thought everybody would behave in as naiive a manner as me is still a mystery - my rational mind tells me that bloggers with high readerships will only mention anything if paid to do so. This sounds ridiculous, but if your blog made enough in advertising to support your entire family (and several do), you can imagine becoming mercenary too.
I trudged off to Petite Anglaise, to find out who she reads. This led me on to Dooce - a quite wonderful blog written by somebody who got fired for blogging, which in turn exploded her readership into the stratosphere. From there I somehow found my way to La Coquette, and was lost for half an hour in her writings of life in Paris, and of her bicycle repair shop that serves hot chocolate and banana cake. The road then took me on to Finslippy, Mighty Girl and Suburban Bliss.
Have you noticed the trend here? I hadn’t until finishing that previous paragraph. All these blogs are written by women… I’m not quite sure if I subconsciously look for blogs written by women, or if there are more female bloggers out there. I would suspect the latter, but I will admit that I tend to get on with women better than men most of the time. Something about taking the time to listen, which apparently is sorely lacking in many people these days.
Getting back on-topic, I now have a number of blogs to follow over the coming weeks, and from my flying visits they all seem to spend similar (read:inordinate) amounts of time reading and writing blogs that I do, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll have new input for my sponge of a brain in the morning.
Input. That sounds like something from “Short Circuit”. I am standing here beside myself…