23 May 2010

Post number 1,000

Yippee.

One thousand posts, boring, tedious, showing a lack of insight, and perhaps the occasional flight of brilliance, if in spite of ourselves.  Our readership has always been small, at the most reaching about fifty to sixty hits a day at its highest.  It has declined considerably since then, although once in a while, and it has been a good while since the last, someone links to us, and we get a brief avalanche, a few hundred people who drop by within a day or two, and then leave, never to return.

When we began, this was a blog to discuss church music, as we were both involved with a choir at our church- I a singer and Puff as a researcher.  We discovered how a Mass should be done, and realized our church was doing otherwise, and we began to blog about it.  I left that choir over a year ago, as a new member of Parish Council showed up at a choir practice one day and demanded we play nothing but her favourite hymns, which consisted of Haugen/Haas/Schutte and their ilk.  I was always prepared to sing their works, but I never wanted to sing nothing but their works.  I left the choir. Puff researches no more for them.  Research is no longer necessary.

For a time we posted at least once a day.  We went out from music and began blogging about other topics.  Family.  Daily life.  Literature. News.  I occasionally fisked other writers- my fisks of McBrien were fairly popular, but the exercise ultimately seemed rather futile.  McBrien's writing is practically self fisking.  It is read by people already inclined to agree with what he has to say.  My fisks were also read by people already prepared to what I had to say.  No battles were won, or even fought.  No minds were changed, no opinions modified.  I find McBrien's writings tedious and repetitve, and fisks of such writing would become so as well.  I moved on. I stopped posting every day.

 I have seen other blogs come and go.  When we started out, the star blog was Gerald Augustinus' The Cafeteria is Closed.  Gerald, a staunch defender of the faith who used the word Liberal as a curse, became one himself, and shut down his blog.  Christus Vincit went through a period of fluctuation.  One writer, Jason, left the Church and went back to the Lutherans.  BMP lost his job as an organist, and delivers food now.  Posts there are scarce.  Posts are also a rarity at another one of the most popular blogs, Curt Jester,  as they are at my favourite blog, Dyspeptic Mutterings.  Other blogs came up and filled in the gap.  

It seems to me most blogs do ultimately become rather repititious, the same viewpoints repeated, the same straw men raised up to be struck down, the same dead horse whipped over and over again.  Perhaps the phenomena of blogging is burning itself out.  Looking back on it all, there are times when I think I can say of blogging, a la Churchill, that never before in the field of human endeavor has so little been said so often by so many.

I doubt I will be writing a 2,000th post, reflecting back on the next thousand.  I still may write about Literature.  I still have to write a little more of the history, as I promised someone I would.  I have an upcoming birth to announce.  An upcoming death to announce.  Some news as yet unknown to announce.  There's still a little life left in this blog.  We'll continue on; run the race; keep the faith.

4 comments:

/dev/null said...

Well, "we" are still down at 76, working on 77 (there are several candidates 77, but none of them seem quite right... ) and, well, generally plodding along with life in general.

Congratulations!

Patience said...

Prayers that everything goes well in the upcoming birth. Not much longer now eh?

Dim Bulb said...

Blogging is less tedious than crawling out of bed every morning to go to school or work, probably because it carries no obligations (excepting self-imposed ones).

I've had several blogs since 2005, none of them generated much traffic until I started posting stuff on the Sunday readings. Now I average about 125 hits a day. That's not exactly American Papist numbers yet I now feel somehow obligated to post something nearly every day (sigh).

I've been keeping Puff's father in my prayers since I know what losing one is like.

Puff the Magic Dragon said...

Thank you Dim for your prayers.

I keep hoping for the best, while preparing for the worst.