I’m just discovering the world of Dave Wieinberger, so you’ll probably be getting a slew of posts referring to him in the near future. One post of his really resonates with me though. Dave writes a post stating thatno, he is not keeping up with your blog.
It sounds silly, but many people assume that because you are subscribed to their blog that you will read everything they have to say. Same thing with podcasts. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case.
The truth is, I probably haven’t read your blog in weeks. Months maybe.
And I don’t expect you to have read mine.
I don’t want to lie any more. I don’t want to feel guilty any more. So let me tell you flat out: There are too many blogs I like and too many people I like to making “keeping up” a reasonable expectation, any more than you should expect me to keep up with Pokemon characters or I should expect you to keep up with Hollywood movies. I’m not going to feel guilty any longer about my failure.
I will read your blog on occasion, either because I’ve been thinking of you or because something reminded me of you. Maybe it’ll be because you sent me an email pointing to a post you think I’ll enjoy. Go ahead! I’d love to hear from you.
There are many people whose blogs and podcasts I absolutely love. However, due to the realities of life and the constraints of time, there’s just no way to read and listen to everything. I love listening to the Academic Aesthetic’s podcasts, but somehow or another I know I’ve only listened to three or four when he’s got over twenty episodes already! So I listen to them when I can and delete them when I can’t.
For some reason, it seems like it sounds callous to say that, but I think it’s just reality setting in. I don’t read every book that I want to, I don’t listen to every radio show, nor will I read every blog post or listen to every podcast. Such is life.
I know some people who don’t like ready blogs because they feel they just can’t keep up. I think people tend to forget that you don’t have to keep up. A blog entry is not a personal letter to you. It’s a newspaper column, a letter to the editors, or a magazine article. If you don’t read a few don’t worry, they’ll print more!
Heh, the funny thing is that this is a summer blog post. I get the feeling that most people who subscribe to this blog won’t even read it.
And good for them for letting it go 
I’m glad someone said this. I thought it was just me. As a blog newbie, I didn’t want to state what I felt was the obvious, but where does the time go? So much time is taken to write a blog, much less reading blogs and listening to other’s podcasts, but I have grown so much by making that time to read other’s that I have to be very selective. And it takes time to be selective, too!
There is so much information out there in blogs/podcasts; you have to not read some just to be able to read some. OK, now go back and re-read that sentence as it actually makes sense, well, maybe only to me.
One of my first correspondences to Steve was about how time consuming the creation of a blog can be and where did he find time to do it? It does get better later as far as time management goes, but with the explosion of blogging and podcasts, information is even more omnipresent. As Mick sings, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes well you might find, you get what you need.”
Keep trying.
7/12/2005
I gloss through my RSS listings but I am only reading about 1 in 20 - but I did catch this one. (PS I also liked the one on the NECC handouts too!)
I just did my first ’spring cleaning’ of podcasts, I just can’t work through all the old ones on my iPod to listen to some of the more recent stuff. Despite Smart Playlists I can’t seem to get a good way to thread my podcasts so I have to start ‘throwing’ them out.
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