Running through a dry patch again.

Meaningful thought has been a commodity that's hard to scrape together for me recently. The cold has rather flattened the few remaining brain cells I have left, and combined with a lack of time and energy, very little other than observations and rubbish has been published here.

I also wonder if I've rather overdone the blog feed thing. There seem to now be 20 to 30 new posts a day, as I took the opportunity to try to follow some additional blogs. This is simply not really working for me right now, and I'm finding a sense of detachment using a feed reader instead of taking time over each persons blog. Lots of you are using very similar (effectively white/pale/colourless) blog designs, which look really cool in the flesh, but in the viewing window of the reader just turn to pale characterless washes of information.

Maybe it's time to give bloglines another go?

Whatever. I have however fallen behind, and that's something I hate too. Lives have gaps in, relationships that were warming have cooled. I might have to be brutal and chop some names for the reader (or leave them in, but just ignore). It is disappointing, as I also feel I should have more time and capacity to take in the extra relationships. But that's the key - relationships. Randall, Laura, Dixie, Marc, Johanna, Hilary, and Linea (not in any specific order) are all key blogosphere relationships for me. Fern too, but I know you through other places. Martin and Jenny are a pre-existing friendship, ditto Sue and to an extent ditto Sarah. Then there are some that I'd like to build, but haven't got there yet - like Robyn, John Smulo, and most recently Ben C, Inky, Ruth, Jonathan, Paul Mayer, Brodie, Gadgetvicar (who must have a real name) and maybe even Ursula.

But I'm starting to wonder at the kind of relationships that are buildable/reasonable in the blogosphere. In one sense, being superficial comes very easily to me, yet as I share thoughts and exchange ideas with people I find surface-relations to be inadequate. Reading and commenting on Paul's blog made me *feel* like I was getting closer in friendship, yet there isn't enough time to build a friendship properly and simply leaving comments behind seems ineffectual and a bit pathetic. I REALLY don't want to turn blogging into a time-critical discipline, making sure each relationship gets it's quota of attention, yet it doesn't sit well to just drop people either.

What to do? Guess we'll see.

If anyone would like to have a good and serious go at offending me then that would make it much easier to drop you off the blogroll and free up time for someone else. So if you're secretly harbouring Tourettes syndrome and want to let it out, looks like I'm your man.