Blog Block

Instant karma. On Thursday I posted that I would have more than enough material to post blog after blog for the next many months. And of course I haven't posted anything since then.

I have started a few times. The topics were certainly easy. My son's birthday. My close friend's birthday. Even could have gone the sports route with the great Celtics playoff games. And I got a note from Jamie about the huge upset in the Kentucky Derby.

But nothing happened. As I said, instant karma. It's payback for the fact that I was so confident of just hitting the Edit button and writing something easily. So confident, in fact, that I even began making something a little different for the 200th post, which should have happened this Wednesday or Thursday and is now heading to the middle of the month.

I've started reading quite a few blogs lately and I have noticed that most bloggers eventually run out of interesting ideas and end up writing about writing their blogs. It's the long-form of tweeting that you're sending a tweet. And about as interesting.

I would call it navel gazing, but that would remind me that I can't see mine. Well, I can, but only in the bathroom mirror and unfortunately I have to take in the rest of me as well so I try to avoid that. So instead of writing about writing blogs, let me write about reading them.

My favorite blogger is Kelley, who does MagnetoBoldToo. She is just a fantastic writer and very funny and perceptive on top of that. She is also the most creative user of the f-word I have encountered in a very long time. Right now she's having medical, emotional, and family problems and I have realized how much you can end up caring about someone you have never met - don't even know her last name - and all because they were able to make you enjoy it when they wrote about themselves. And it doesn't hurt that she is able to do all of this while being excruciatingly funny most of the time. (If you go there right now, though, she is using guest bloggers so read down through the archives to see what the genuine article is all about.)

Poker star Daniel Negreanu's blog is interesting, especially if you're a fan of his. Besides writing about poker, he wanders off into all sorts of other stuff that makes it fun for me to read. Ricky Gervais is often foul and filthy, of course. And very funny. As is Stuff White People Like as well, although it does get a tad self-promotional. Carl Bialik, the Wall St Journal's Numbers Guy, has been one of my favorite columnists for a very long time. I couldn't do HSX without reading Tom O'Neil's Gold Derby. And LK turned me onto Chubby Hubby: Whining, Dining & Marriage, a fantastic cooking site by Singapore's Aun Koh. And I get my Boston sports fixes by downloading the BS Report podcasts by ESPN's Bill Simmons.

So now you have plenty to read if I don't post, and all the pressure is off me to produce. Which means I will have either kicked this writer's block into the next county. Or not. But I promise no more writing about writing.