Obsessed With the Blogroll

I have a habit of recycling posts. This one just seemed appropriate.

If you have been blogging for any length of time you probably have received an email from another blogger asking for you to blogroll them. Sometimes they phrase it differently and offer you a reciprocal link exchange.

Either way the question is still the same, "will you blogroll me?" They want a link on your site that can be used by your readers to find their blog.

I am a bit of a prickly and at times moody fellow so these requests haven't always fallen upon receptive ears. Sometimes I have just done it and sometimes I don't even bother to consider it. You may recall that in the past I asked the denizens of cyberspace to tell me how many blogs you read.

It was a serious question that I asked because I have noticed that many bloggers have blogrolled an exceptional number of blogs and it occurred to me that it would be tough for them to read them all. So I spent a few moments pondering this and considering whether I thought that it made sense to have that many blogs on a blogroll.

Part of me thought that it was similar to having more than a few pairs of shoes. You couldn't possibly use/read that many consistently so after a while it seemed a bit like excess and overkill. I even read a few explanations in which the blogger suggested that the more links they offered the more that they would receive. I remember snootily thinking to myself that I would never let my ego get in the way like that blogger had.

Well, I was wrong. My ego did get involved and I began to get more involved with this than I had intended. I started paying a lot of attention to Technorati and to my stat counter. In fact I paid enough that I noticed that after a period of time some bloggers had unblogrolled me. I admit to being a little miffed by it.

I wondered what had happened. Why the hell did they keep that really stupid and boring blog. They could have dumped him and kept me. I was bent about it. And then there were the occasional blog altercations in which another blogger and I disagreed so vehemently that we had to unblogroll each other. Nice to see that you never outgrow junior high.

Anyway, after a time I grew more settled into my blogging routine and began to see things differently. I am a voracious reader. I have around seven bookcases that are jammed full of books and probably 12 boxes of books in my garage. One day while I was looking for a new book to read it occurred to me that in some respects keeping a long list of blogs on the blogroll wasn't all that different from what I did at home.

It wasn't profound, but it made perfect sense to me. The other thing I learned about the blogosphere is that it is littered with space junk. There are tons of abandoned blogs. People start them and just leave them up, hanging there, leaving you to wonder if they intend to return or not. Some of my favorites no longer exist.

And then there is the other issue. You run into blog boredom. Some blogs just stop holding your attention. I am sure that there are people reading my blog now who are ready to move onto something new. It happens. It is hard to keep your muse employed full time. They expect benefits and a pension and you are often lucky if you can offer them a simple IRA or 401k.

Apparently my own muse just quit on me. You'll excuse me for a moment as I need to go chase them down and beg their forgiveness.