Blogs & Bloggers That Don’t Evolve…Die

Several months before his death my paternal grandfather sat up in his hospital bed and told me he would fight for every last breath and that he would be around until he wasn’t.

I laughed and told him I wasn’t sure if the Grim Reaper knew that in his youth my grandfather had been quite the scrapper but figured that old bag of bones would just learn the hard way. But I told grandpa to remember that there was no honor in a fair fight and that if he called me I would gladly give that old bag of bones a severe beating before I threw him in a soup pot.

Grandpa smiled and laughed, I don’t have to close my eyes to see those blue eyes twinkle. So hard to believe that it is almost eight years since he lay down his arms and chose to head off to see whatever lies beyond the veil.

Blogs & Bloggers That Don’t Evolve…Die

Passover started last night and the family once again gathered at my parents’s house to retell the tale of the Exodus and to take a moment to come together.

Midway through the meal I looked around the table and thought about all of the faces that were not there, some are still around but live thousands of miles away and others are simply gone.

One of my brother-in-laws asked me if I was still blogging and when I said yes asked me if I could tell him how I keep it up. I told him that blogs and bloggers that don’t evolve die.

It led to an interesting conversation about how our seder has evolved over the years but most of you are probably far more interested in reading/thinking about the evolution of blogs and bloggers.

The main reason I am still here after ten years is I love writing and that whenever it has felt like a chore I haven’t been afraid to shift gears and try something new.

Blogging About  Blogging Generates Traffic

Read through the posts here and you’ll find some serious and some snark content about how blogging about blogging generates traffic.

It is the low hanging fruit of the blogosphere. Every new blogger rabidly searches for ways to build their blogs and improve them so any time you write a post that provides guidance or “how to do XYZ” they are virtually guaranteed traffic.

My issue really doesn’t lie with those posts in general but with my disdain for the bloggers  that write them and and echo chamber that comes with them.

That is not to say all of them are bad or second rate but so many are, filled with a poor regurgitation of something that has been said a million times over and in the same voice.

Don’t ask me to explain why that bothers me because it shouldn’t but it does.

The Best Part Of Blogging

One of the guests asked what the best part of blogging is and I had to think about it. There was a time when I would have said the community that came with it and there is still much truth in it.

I have met some great people made good friends and done so in a way I never would have guessed. The dad blogger group I fell into is pretty cool too.

But when I think about it the answer is that blogging has changed my life in profound and meaningful ways. If you are among the regular readers you have read/heard me say that multiple times but this is a bit different.

Different because there is more perspective than in the past.

Blogging has been one of the best tools I have had for figuring out why I like/love/hate things. It is where I have gone to sort out different situations, some of them quite difficult.

Ten years in I can flip through the pages and see how some of the changes I set in motion several years back have come to fruition and or how they developed.

That move to Texas is huge. I never would have imagined that it would have had the impact it has or that I would be so anxious to go back.

Ten years ago I didn’t introduce myself as a writer or talk about the books I wanted to write and now I do.

One Blogger’s Evolution

If my grandfathers were still here I’d show them the picture above and ask them what it was like to build the pyramids. They’d make a crack about my being much older than I think but not so old I can’t do more than write about dreams.

They’d ask me to tell them about my life and to explain the kind of blogging I do now. I’d tell them I am a dad blogger who writes about what I am passionate about and that my hard head and I are trying to blaze our own trail.

They’d ask me if I was happy and if I nodded my head they’d say keep going and I would.

Blogs & Bloggers That Don’t Evolve…Die

Sometimes I look at my comments section and think about all of the familiar faces that rarely appear any more. Many are bloggers that hung up their keyboards.

Most of the ones who quit did so because blogging wasn’t fun for them any more. They decided they had told all of the stories they had to tell or that it was too time consuming or too something or another.

But if you ask me the big problem was they didn’t evolve. They didn’t look for other stories to tell or find new ways to create and bloggers that are one trick ponies sometimes find blogging to be rough when the well runs dry.

What do you think?