Lateral Lines

It's inevitable. Every year around this time the outdoor web slows dramatically. The ice fisherman are waiting for the one extra one-tenth of a centimeter to form on the lakes and ponds which, somehow, the collective wisdom has decided makes it safe to venture out on (except for the guy in the pickup who thinks it is - wait until January, buddy!). Most hunters here in the north are oiling up their guns and casing them for the next ten months. Bow hunters are still out and about, but only the strong silent types (i.e. - the really tough ones). The turkey guys? ...Well they're a pretty quiet bunch for the most part anyway - except Jimmy Houston. Snow is falling, the sledders are counting the inches and press coverage of the outdoors is waning as journalistic resources are redeployed to cover the blood sport that is holiday shopping.

Collectively, the outdoor blogosphere gets pretty quiet as well. Then we beat ourselves up about it....

I started blogging back in June of 2005 and have been through my own peaks and valleys as a look back through the archives will attest. I've been following several threads of discussion over the last few weeks from Kristine (who we should crown the official cheering section of outdoors-related blogging as she is everywhere and always positive - awesome!) over at Outdoor Bloggers Summit, Cliff over at HuntingSense and, just yesterday, Steve over at Skinny Moose. Each in their own way offers encouragement, advice, and even self-flagellation for those inevitable pauses in blog activity.

In all cases those posts are spot-on, worthy, and appreciated, but I would like to add point to the discussion that I think we overlook at times: the more narrow and focused one becomes in what they allow themselves to publish, the more quickly they will inevitably find a need for a break from blogging (even if only briefly).

The term "blog" comes from "web log" which was originally used to describe the journaling of one's online activities. In the late nineties it evolved into the chronological journals we think of today. Even as mainstream America begins to take up blogging, there are some who are proclaiming it dead? I don't believe that to be the case, however I do speak from personal experience in saying that my own greatest moments of productivity as a blogger have come in those times when I, in one way or another, broke out of a rut. If you look at my blog posts of two years ago, you'll see that they are nearly all very strictly on topic. That is certainly not the case today.

The plain fact is that, while I'm obsessed with fishing in a way the most people aren't, it's not the only thing that interests me - though my wife will probably disagree. Heck, some subjects unrelated, in a strict sense, to fishing or hunting get stuck in the front of my conscious for weeks, months, or even permanently - especially during the seasonal lulls like now.

Over time, I have found that if I choose to ignore subjects at the forefront of my mind (like politics is now) and maintain a strict, "topical" focus in these pages, I quickly lose my passion for writing about the topics which got me started blogging in the first place. The only solution is to either maintain separate blogs for each of those subjects (which I've tried and find very cumbersome) or allow those topics, for however long they may keep my interest, to creep in to Lateral Lines and explore where they take me.

Inevitably, those topics find their way back into my "filter" of the core topics at hand. While I'm sure some readers may be frustrated by this if they visit looking for subjects only related to fishing, it's what keeps my attention. I've found that for me, as a blogger, that's really all that matters.

Oh, and despite all that, sometimes I still need a break from blogging from time to time... even if only briefly .