Until November of '07 I blogged on Yahoo 360◦. I really enjoyed that blog. I had lots of friends and we all stayed connected. We'd read each other's posts, make comments and send silly messages to each other. In the relatively short time I was there I had over 10,000 visits to my page. It was a lot of fun. Honestly, it was hard to leave it behind. Why did I? Well, a number of reasons.
One of the things that bugged me was whenever I would leave the link to my blog somewhere it never connected to the most current page. It linked to an old entry and wouldn't update to the newest entry, thus seeming that I never entered anything past October '06. Another thing were the Yahoo gremlins. Sneaky little bastards often ran amok, taking away the comments, poofing my avatar image into the internet void for days, and a host of other irritating technical snafus. Then came the word from Yahoo they were going to close down Y360 and shift everything to another platform. Something like Multiply.com or such. I didn't want the hassle of it. There was also the inevitable slow down of blogging among my friends. Life can get busy, blogging takes a back seat to every day duties.
Another major thing was my own time for blogging. I had opened the blog here with e-blogger, planning to incorporate it into my new website design. It was a pain in the patootie sometimes to blog on one and then update the same info on the other. I wanted to concentrate my efforts into this blog, not divide my attention between the two. Funny, considering how little I've blogged of late. I used to keep my blog page hoppin' over at the Y. I have to say I believe I wrote some really good stuff on that blog. I haven't been much of a story teller here.
Why is that?
One of the things I realize I've really missed about being over at Y360 was the feedback from friends. I'd post a blog and in no time I'd be getting notification in my email this friend or that friend had commented on my post. I loved to read those comments. They made me feel connected, like the stories I was telling were interesting and entertaining to my Y360 friends. It was sort of like having an audience to talk to. It made me work hard to give them something worth reading.
Since being here there's been almost zero in feedback/comments. I know a couple of friends who do read this stuff, but that's about all they do. Read it and move along. No response. No repartee. No rapport. No sense of being a part of a community. I'm just another blogger, blogging amid a gazillion other bloggers in blog land. It's kind of depressing. It's like talking to someone, hear no reply and when you look over to see why not you discover they are asleep. No one heard you.
Now don't get me wrong, blogging isn't about just filling up the comment box. It's a kind of therapy for me. Making myself talk about things in a very public forum. It's putting myself out there on "display", teaching myself to be open when I've spent 95% of my life trying to not be noticed, keep my feelings and emotions tightly wrapped and hidden from view. And, more times than not, those kind of Y360 post would would gets comments of great advice, encouragement, or "I've been there, don't that!" replies. It was comforting, like there were others out there who really understood what I was talking about or going through.
Granted, I don't expect this post to garner any comments anymore than the previous posts to this blog. And, again, it's not what my blogging is really all about. But I will confess I do miss them sometimes. I miss the Y360 family. Contemplating this sparked me to repost my page with MySpace. Of course, I'm not ending this blog, it's my main blog and a part of my website. But MySpace is an active community and there's a good change of making some new friends over there. We'll see how it goes.
Namaste, y'all ...
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