Are You Having As Much Fun As I Am?

With all the talk out there about how if you blog too often, you could die, or so-called "bitchmemes" and the occasional cranky rant, you'd be perfectly acceptable in thinking the blogosphere is a dire, dark place. But, if we all could take a step back and look at what's happening through blogging, how we're helping each other find new ways to use technology, how we can hold conversations across geographic and demographic boundaries, and find commonalities with people we might never actually meet in person, it's actually a lot of fun - and I get a kick out of not just what's happened so far, but where blogging could be going.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, the posterboy for hard-working, aggressive reporting in the blogosphere, was quoted in the much passed-around New York Times article this weekend, saying, "At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable."

But while Arrington and his team may live in fear of getting scooped or somebody else finding the story, the breakneck journalism pace isn't for everyone. I doubt that many of the bloggers who are now trying to break news and report news originally thought that's what their blogs would be. After all, do you really think I have some unique dirt on the Yahoo! and Microsoft merger negotiations? Of course I don't. I also have zero insight into when Apple will come out with their 3G iPhone, or what company Google plans to acquire next. And guess what? Neither do 99% of the other bloggers talking about it.

Due to this understanding that I'm not bound to play by the old-school journalist fears, I'm really having fun doing what I'm doing. While I have had the opportunity to break the news on some promising young services, and have seen that number rapidly grow over time, I'm blogging for the sake of writing and sharing and communicating, on those things I really find interesting. If I'm keeping silly hours, it's because I choose to. If I choose to write about TiVo one day and Toluu or Technorati the next, I'll do it. And if I'm gaining weight, it's because I'm getting lazy and like eating, not because "my blog made me do it".

Finding new Web services = Fun.
Communicating with peers = Fun.
Engaging with today's blog leaders = Fun.
Becoming part of what people read every day = Fun.

So if you are blogging, and you're finding that you've strayed too far away from the core mission of your blog, and what it is you really wanted to do in the first place, and you've lost the "Fun" factor, think about what you're doing, and see if you can get back to it. I wouldn't be blogging any more if it stopped being fun, and I'm not writing about things that aren't interesting to me. We can't all go be the next TechCrunch. But we can be ourselves. Lose the stress and enjoy being a blogger for the reasons you started - whatever they were.