My Blog Envy, Deconstructed

This Richard Lawrence Cohen post and attached comments (which get a little literary for me) connect to something I've been thinking about for the past few days. Cohen talks about the possibility of fiction fading into oblivion as blogs gain in influence and what that means for his career, writing in general, publishing and a whole bunch of other things.

As with most other things, reading this made me think about myself. Over the past two or three weeks, I've noticed that my blog envy has shifted from the entertaining political-ish bloggers (Althouse, Galley Slaves) to the funny pop culture bloggers (whatevs.org, lindsayism). I've even been daydreaming about meeting Jessica Coen. (Not as weird as it sounds. In high school I used to day dream about getting good scores on my AP tests. I just don't have very cool or interesting aspirations.)

It's not so weird to me that I have all of these blog crushes, or that my allegiance switches from blog genre to genre so quickly. What's interesting is that I haven't had a single authorly crush in months. Not so long ago, I was blogging regularly about books I read, styles I'd like to emulate, books I'd like to write.

I haven't even thought about writing anything much longer than a blog post in at least six weeks.

I'm torn between feeling disappointed in myself (where have my writerly dreams gone? how will I ever live the leisurely life of the writer if I don't write things that make me money?) and just being pleased with myself for writing anything at all.

Most likely, I'm just going through a phase. I do hope that one day, some type of desire to see my name in hard copy print rekindles itself. Until then, I guess I'll have to settle for obsessive jealousy of other bloggers rather than for "real writers."