Munch, You Don't Have To Turn on the Red Light

Miss Missives is a quite distressed over a trend she spies lately, people blogging because they think they have to. They cast aside their lives to fill each day with posts, they succumb to memes and gimmicks to fill space and drive traffic. They have existential crises over their blog: should they, shouldn't they, are they as good, are they better, why don't they have more traffic, why aren't people commenting more.

Listen, this isn't Speed and you're not at the helm of an explosive bus. If you step away from the computer, no one is going to perish. Very few of us are ever going to make money blogging. Only a minuscule percentage will use blogging as a segue to other writing endeavors. So why are so many of you letting it stoke your anxiety and magnify your Type A-ness?

Blogging should be a creative outlet, a doorway out of isolation, a sacred space, a living photo album, a stage for the shy class clown, a soapbox for the amateur pundit, a life line. It is not homework, and when it starts to feel that way, you need to step away.

Munch appears to be one of these people. He challenges himself to post daily for thirty days and then throws himself into a panic trying to live up to the challenge. This blog feels like exercise and it makes me tired. True, there are moments of humor, a few bright stars. Still, the impression I get is that blogging is about as inspiring for Munch as selling insurance. Too much of it is banal, nonsensical, unnecessary and so long and verbose, that your 991 word tome on Space felt more like 2001 Words, a Space Oddity. I like this post if for nothing more than its brevity.

Most of the material feels forced. For example, your Letter to My Unborn Crack Baby falls flat, it's just sad and not a good cautionary tale-sad like an after-school special. It just left me with the uncomfortable feeling of having watched some educated twenty-something mime for a minute the life of a crack addict akin to watching a modern day black-face performance. Finally, your post titled, My Battle with Sobriety is where I finally lost my battle with sobriety. Sadly, even after an array of intoxicants I was still uninspired.

As for the design and structural elements, I can say without reserve that this is the most dull blog design I have ever laid eyes upon. From a visual standpoint, your font is unreadably small and you need more pictures. Some writing stands on its own, yours does not. With eighteen boxes, like your writing, even your sidebar is excessive.

The only thing I can offer you in terms of constructive input is write when you want. Write when you come across something that needles itself into your brain. Write when you can't not write. Don't write to write because this isn't a job. Additionally, if at some point you grow to love your blog, dress it in something prettier.

In sum, there are those sexual encounters that are little more than an exercise in anatomy and copulation, warranting no more thought than etching that notch on the bedpost. Then there is the lover. The lover inflames your passion, possesses your soul forcing you to write bad poetry, promise anything for one more embrace, it keeps you up at night, daring you to stay away from it. For the good ones, blogging is like a lover, sometimes it's good, other times it is not but there is a passion and fire that keeps it interesting no matter what. For you, I suspect blogging is an exercise, something you do for the bragging rights but are numb to in its consummation.

You blog because you think you should.

Size matters but big and long when you don't know how to use it is pointless.

Sometime you just don't make sense.

Follow the light.