Disaffected Blogger Syndrome Recovery Program

I guess there comes a point in every bloggers life where they hit “the wall” and experience the three stages of “disaffected blogger syndrome”. Negligence, anger/avoidance, and continuance/dissolvement.

Stage 1: Negligence
It is a deceptively simple start really; 1 day goes, then 2 slip by unnoticed. You promise yourself that you are going to write soon because you are a responsible blogger; a self-respecting participating citizen of the online community. You are not one of THOSE people who just create and start blogs willy nilly; you are committed and have invested time and energy in your blog. It’s ok to skip a few days here and there, anyone else would right? So, still confident in yourself, you set a nearby date as THE day when you will catch up writing.

Oh, but hang on- that’s the day you end up cleaning your flat, or taking the bus tour in London, or sleeping in getting used to the time zone, or the day that your just reading books for a change. People understand why you’re not writing, right? You have to live life sometime! You have to go and do stuff to write about for crying out loud! Besides, its not as if you have a responsibility to continuously write. You’re not one of THOSE people who live their lives surgically connected to their computer spending their life devoid of human contact in small dark holes. Subsisting on microwave dinners, and becoming increasingly fluent in the geographic intrigues of Warcraft III.

No worries, just do it next week. You’re still a good person, you just live for the moment that’s all.

Stage 2: Avoidance
This usually starts about 1 month AP (After Post). Symptoms include increased desire to avoid writing, a heightened ability to find other worthless endeavors to supplant the blog, and aggression towards the blog.

The anger in some deep Freudian way isn’t actual anger at the webspace itself, but at the conflict of who you thought you were, and who you have become. That and your relationship with your father.
You realize that you also fear the blog. Yes, that’s right, fear a thing of your own creation. Like Frankenstein and his monster. Like Like George Lucas and Darth Vader. . Like Sheryl Leach and Barney the dinosaur.
Because you have to catch up, you feel there is too much to do, and it is impossible to really write everything that has happened. You are afraid that you cannot do it. You as the master and creator of an inanimate object, have failed in your responsibilities as master of its universe, and now fear the task at hand. Just like I feared retribution from the 7 Tamagachis I killed by negligence in 1992.

You realize that you are no longer the idealistic net-izen that cheerfully, and wittily contributes to the greater good of the web community at large, but one of the dregs of the online society who takes up space, and relies upon the constant welfare of the webstate to stall constant online eviction. You have become one of THOSE people and, therefore, you join the ranks of cynics before you who have left the online world for one reason or another.


And as a newfound cynic, you avoid the blog.

For how long? I don’t know. Indefinitely.

At least till your consciousness kicks in, and you enter the third stage.

Stage 3
Continuance/Dissolvement
So, do you continue or end your blog? Do you put to naught the hours spent filling its space, or do you become the online Rudy, the come-back kid, the guy who came back swinging when everyone had moved on?

THOSE people quit. THOSE people end their blogs. THOSE people don’t try anymore, but I am not one of THOSE people.

I chose to start again, and finish what I began- and from now on I will do better.

I hope you enjoy our chronicles of England!

Christian