Bloggers and vacations

The Wall Street Journal is on to the not-so-well-kept secret of bloggers, which is that is that they tend to have some degree of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The ubiquity of the internet, laptops, and the like means that bloggers need never be very far away from their connections. Now, "connection" is a word with a double meaning, of course: it can refer to being hooked up to the Web, or simply to being hooked, as in "addicted."

Yes, some would argue that blogging is an addiction--perhaps what's referred to as a Positive Addiction, but an addiction nonetheless.

The WSJ article highlights the very special dilemma facing bloggers who want to take some time off:

In the height of summer-holiday season, bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit.

According to the WSJ, even the biggest bloggers seem to mull over--or perhaps obsess over--the problem.

But me? No. Not moi. Not addicted, not at all. No siree. I have no difficulty whatsoever in resolving this issue. When I'm on vacation--and I've taken rather lengthy ones each of the two summers I've been blogging--I continue to post. But I take a middle road and lighten my load considerably. I won't bore you with the secrets of how I do it, but I've managed to keep up the blog without ruining my vacations. At least so far.

The truth is that bloggers depend on addictions, both in themselves and in others. After all, aren't we trying to form an addiction in our readers--an addiction to reading our blogs? Maybe a better word would be "habit"--makes us all feel better.

And, just to show how very unaddicted I am, I'm now going out to enjoy some of that thing known as "real life." Till later...