Blogging conundrum

[greatbear]

It's been a long time in coming, and I have been doing what I can to keep things running as smoothly as possible here on my LJ as long as I could, but I am running out of options.

Either my LJ is a victim of it's own success, or I have overextended myself beyond a sensible involvement in it. Or perhaps it's both.

My friends list has expanded immensely over time. Keeping up with everyone's entries is time consuming. A couple hours can pass and I will gain a couple dozen or more new entries, not including those from communities or RSS feeds. In other words, by the end of the workday when I come home and unwind, I can be faced with 100 or more posts. Being that these are from those I feel 'closest' to on my list, I am faced with the choices of using a sizable amount of limited free time to interact with everyone, skimming over entries to try and find the most important ones (which is unfair), or simply reaching a cutoff point where I dont go back any further in my friends entries (even worse than unfair).

Likewise, I enjoy interacting with people who comment after I make a post. The time I spend reading and commenting on other folk's LJs takes away from the personal involvement here. This is part of the reason why my entries show up late in the day, usually the last thing before I hit the sack. It lets any comments collect slowly, and I can tend to them later the next day (I dont blog from work). I realize that many of you are in the same situation as I am, and can only read so far back. As such, my entries get missed in much the same way.

As much as I hate to say it, time has finally come for some major changes. First of all, LiveJournal has been eating into my time way too much. I simply have to spend more time doing all the other stuff and tasks that are part of daily life, or else I fall behind. As it stands, I am way behind in many areas. As springtime soon moves in, a lot of serious work needs to be done here. New roof on the house and garage, gardening and yard work, and more travel and activities that me and Jeff promised ourselves. I also need to consider my health in all of this. I used to be more active around here prior to the advent of 'net chatting and blogging. My hands were seemingly built with tools in mind, not a keyboard. And my realization that I need to create and spend more face-time with people means I have to spare the virtual socializing.

But I cant bring myself to cut off contact here with anyone. I made so many friends here. I want the virtual to become the realtime. I love to read about what y'all are doing and I love to share my goings-on with you. It's not a habit, it's a necessity now. LJ has become my sole online socializing space these days. What other online presence I didnt dismantle (Bearciti, BMB) have become simple contact points, and might be eliminated soon anyway.

Lastly, I dont want to go about trimming my friends list or compartmentalizing people into groups. I have already separated most of the communities and feeds into sub-groups to allow only you guys your own place. Still, I get overwhelmed.

In closing, I have a question for those with sizable friends lists. How do you do it? I know many can post from work or use mobile devices to keep in touch, neither of which is an option for me at this time. I already feel as if I am turning my back on a whole bunch of people here, and that is never my intention.

I'm lost.

Comments

[lostncove.livejournal.com]

I was trained a little in speed reading, and that helps with LJ posts. Admittedly, I skim, especially when time is low. It's kind of like a newspaper of my friends..."OK, everybody doing ok? Alright. Oops, here's something important, better read this."