The Anti-Blog.

Not too long ago, I was out to dinner with some friends and the subject of blogs came up. "Why would anybody have a blog? I mean, who has time for a blog? I would rather do other things," my friend said.

"Yeah, I don't get it. Does anyone read them?" the other person at the table said. They seemed genuinely mystified.

Somehow, this provoked very little embarassment or defensiveness on my part, maybe because I don't actively court an audience for this blog and thus do not get much of one. "I have a blog," I said, "But I can see what you're saying." We talked about the surfeit, surplus and superfluousness of all the bloggity-blogging out there.

Yes, I'm part of the problem. But even before that conversation occurred, I had been feeling less inspired to post here. Whether it's a temporary bout of ennui or something more lasting, I haven't felt a major urge to "share" anything lately. The other day I found myself searching my memory for some recent instance of entertainingly painful humanity, nagged by the fact that the blog slate was blank. I used to have a little list of topics in the hopper that I was excited to write about, but that had dried up.

"If you don't catalog yet another one of your crazy neurotic moments for public consumption, it's really no one's loss," I told myself. "Let it go..." And so I have. (That's the trouble with those Buddhist philosophy books I've been reading lately: Sometimes they can be a handy way to buttress one's own laziness.)

It seems I'm not alone in this blogging fatigue. The pbdotc says he "is tired of his own cringe-worthy insights about world affairs." And a top food blogger in San Francisco just wrote that she has lost her appetite for the pastime.

My appetite for reading blogs, on the other hand, has not diminished. I still faithfully visit my favorites, and still find new ones to appreciate. But between blogs, the rest of the Internets, magazines, books, regular radio, XM radio, Netflix, downloaded shows, streamed shows and -- oh yeah -- actual daily human interaction, sometimes the last thing I want to do is add another voice to the mix, especially when it's the internal one I listen to all damn day.

So is blogging fatigue really about getting tired of listening to oneself, or is it also a need to trim the fat from an overloaded media diet? Are you blogging? Is your head still in the game, are you focused? Or are you drifting away from the chatter?