In her Corner View post, Francesca talks about so many blogs disappearing from the world wide web these past few months. This is a trend I myself have seen as well. People are turning more and more to pictures alone (Instagram), or just short messages (Twitter), or no interaction at all.
I too have been neglecting this here blog for a while, partly because I did not know what to share with you (I’ve talked about that before) and partly because I was busy with other projects, notably finishing and publishing a novel. (It is in Dutch, so you’d first need to read up on grammar and vocabulary and all that, but perhaps you’re a polyglot, like this youngster, who does a pretty good job of making me look foolish with my fluency in English and Dutch, and my rusty French, German, Japanese, Danish and rudimentary Spanish.)
I not only stopped reading blogs for a while (I still don’t read many), I also stopped reading books. But now that I am done with the writing and publishing (still doing some marketing, but that’s another story), and have no other obligations than to try and earn my keep, while honing my skills and steering our family towards another way of life, I find myself turning to literature again.
The candlelight does wonders for my eyes, so I’ll sit at the table and read to Top3 or Top4 by candlelight. Afterwards, I’ll often read a chapter or so in my own book (currently re-reading a lot of quality Dutch literature), then pick up my pencils and do some drawing. I’m only online during the day. I unplug from the internet at night, and most weekends.
Perhaps there are more people like me, having a hard time making a living during the day and not feeling the need to be confronted with other people’s happiness, or other people’s struggles for that matter, at night. Not all of them will start reading and drawing by candlelight (though I highly recommend it!), but I gather bloggers do lose readers – to the day-to-day struggle, to other forms of “offline entertainment”, to other platforms.
