It seems the biggest distraction I’ve found for myself to avoid finishing my novel is catching up on my RSS feeds. I have 300-some of them, so it’s a big job, since I let them accumulate since about last August. A lot of them, I’ve just binned, but many more I’ve decided to wade through, just to see what my favorite bloggers have been posting about in the last few months.
But I’ve come to the conclusion that with that many blogs in my blogroll, I’m not going to be able to keep up with them all, and also do all the other things I am resolved to do this term, like writing projects, swimming daily, redesigning my site overall, continuing this reading of books (of which I have many I have never even opened) and so on.
So a cull is coming. My blogroll is going to become a lot shorter. It’s nothing personal; I will probably be cutting some very good bloggers, and I may miss some wonderful posts out there. But on the other hand, I am already missing tons of wonderful posts out there and don’t know what I’m missing. After the first month or so, I’ll forget what I’m missing if I get my blogroll down to half its current size, too. So I’m going to go for it…
After I finish my novel. That’s tonight’s sleepless night project.
Had to do the same thing…as painful as it is, my life has been better since.
Ditto, though most of my culling is via RSS. some blogs I still keep on my site as I hope to get back to them later and wouldn’t want to forget.
Kangmi, that gives me hope.
Blinger, I was thinking of the same thing: I may be able to have some of the feeds I’m subbed to switched to ignore incoming feeds, as they’re good and I hope others would follow the link and get some benefit from them even though I don’t have time to read them all. But we’ll have to see.
By the way, it’s really a hard thing to get oneself to do. I spent a long time at it last night and only got about ten blogs off my blogroll.
I actually didn’t remove any…I just moved them to a different folder. I can look at then whenever I have time, but I no longer feel like I have to read them.
I also remind myself that RSS feeds are a tool to make my life easier.
Good luck.
Ha, the problem is that I’m so interested in so many of the web pages, and my curiosity is really quite a killer.
I think your approach is probably the wisest, but I fear I cannot make myself follow it. For every two blogs I’ve cut, I’ve added one. Seeing as I’d like to maintain the links on my site to all that quality material, I think I’ll just set some to remain up on the blogroll, but for the feed to remain inert in my RSS reading window, so that I feel less daunted. And then, if I want to check them out, I can. That sounds like the wisest approach.