Right now I have over 500 unread posts in my Google Reader. I haven’t read almost any blog posts in weeks, because I’m intimidated by the backlog.
And I just added two blogs.
What is wrong with me? (Don’t answer that.)
And how do I say, “No, I can’t subscribe to Hoyden About Town and Transgriot and half a dozen others anymore, because while they kick ass, and I am always enriched by reading them, they’re just too prolific, and I can’t keep up”? I feel like I Should be reading all these really important and fabulous feminist and trans* and WOC and anti-racist blogs, but I can’t. keep. up. But if I don’t, I’m, I don’t know, slacking. Missing out. Not doing the intersectionalist work I need to be doing.
How do you deal with that? What, if any, blogs do you consider Must Reads? When do you remove a blog from your reader or feed? When do you add any? Are you happy with your blog reading at the moment? Do you feel like it’s too much? Or are you always on the lookout for new and interesting blogs? Are you only a personal-blog reader, or do you subscribe to any bigger topical blogs? I’m interested in answers to any or all of those questions.
And if you want to throw in some about how Twitter fits in there for you (like I need another online timesuck), I’d love to hear it.
i’m VERY liberal with the ?mark all read” button. :-)
I have the blogs I am subbed to filtered into folders by theme. And then I have the ‘absolute faves’ folder in which are the ‘must reads’. The others I read if I have time. The must reads get read first. Hoyden is a must read : )
As for reader, well it stops counting at 1000 but they seem to keep piling up beyond that…
Like Serne, I skim often!
Hoyden is one of my Must-reads though. :)
My personal theory of the feminist blogosphere is “skim lots, surf often, explore much, bookmark rarely”. Bookmarks change depending on my current interests/activity at given blogs.
I recently deleted BitchPhd because of the awful ‘Anne Coulter is a Tranny MAN, Baby!’ joke (And, more to the point, the Dreadful fauxpology afterwards; fucking up happens, we all do it. But that’s the point where you put your Big Girl Knickers on and Own It. You don’t pout that “Y’all have no sense of humour, bitchez” and smear the poo round some more).
I avoid Feministe and Feministing because of the racist tripe I’ve come across there (in Feministe’s case, many commenters bitching at Turkish women choosing to wear the hijab, flaming the one or two folks brave enough to point out that even suspect choice is still a woman’s choice, and joined in that by mods) and I avoid I Blame the Patriarchy for the anti-trans stuff.
Well, after about 4 solid hours (thanks, insomnia!) of reading, skimming, and yes, liberal use of the “mark all read” button, I’m down to a mere 191 unread. That’s an improvement, right?
Hoyden: man, I do love it, but the daily reader kills me. I can’t not read it, and then read all the links, and then read all the comments on the links, and then probably read all the links on the comments on the links, and then there goes several hours of my day. There’s something very pefectionist about me, where it’s ok if I don’t know I don’t know something, but I can’t know I don’t know it.
Ok, that was a little too Rumsfeldian for comfort.
I too avoid Feministe and Feministing, for various reasons, including that I was strying to stick to small/er blogs just to avoid this sort of overload. And we see how well that worked for me… And I’ve not noticed anything really anti-trans on IBTP yet, but maybe my head’s been in the sand?:(
Here’s hoping I can either sleep soon or get that number down to zero by dawn!
I am also very liberal with the “mark all read.” I have a lot of different blogs (friends, politics, craft, design, domestic, fan fic, sex) so I should probably use the folders more. I do check my reader several times a day. If I miss a day or two, it takes hours to catch up.
Maybe I should have the folders checked on specific days. Papercrafting on Mondays, sexblogs on Tuesdays, etc. lol
As for twitter, I use tweetie and tweetdeck to keep up there. I use that pretty much the same as I use google reader—I just check in as often as possible. I have twitterberry on my phone so I keep up that way even when I’m out and about. I trim my follow list pretty regularly.
I started using Google Reader only after I got so intimidated by my Bloglines backlog that I felt like I needed to give up and start all over.
So I have no useful advice. But thank you for letting me know I’m not alone in getting overwhelmed by an RSS backlog. I just logged back in to my Bloglines account after more than a year away, and it really wasn’t as scary as I’d feared.
Twitter sucks up time. I don’t go on at all anymore.
As to blogs: if someone is going through something, I am careful to read any posts that pop up. But, I am with SereneBabe — I mark all as read on a regular basis.
My google reader says I have 1000 unread. I might mark them all as “read.” That is an option.
I make sure to mix it up. Funny blogs (thetypingmakesmesoundbusy, miss britt, windinyourvagina ), mama blogs (hotbellymama, undercovermother, glamlifehousewife), friend blogs, make ya think blogs (yours, hajar-alwi).
I found myself realizing I was have irreconcilable differences with a mama blogger and divorced her. She can make her choices but I’m tired of thinking about them. I have more important things to think about.
This may be the most beautiful sight in the world (after, y’know, my child and my lover and my mother and sunsets and flowers and the wall paintings in over priced hotels):
“All items” has no unread items.Bliss!
Thanks for all the commiseration, support, and suggestions as I weathered this crisis! ;)
Yeah, I'm at "1000+" and have been for days (weeks?) despite assiduous reading/scanning/mark-as-read-ing. I usually go through when I have some spare reading time and check out (a) blogs I really like and (b) blogs I haven't visited in awhile. I let the rest languish till the next pass.
What frustrates me is that I can't do this while the babe's going to sleep on my lap. It makes total sense to do the reading then, but reading posts makes me want to comment, and I have not yet perfected the art of typing one-handed in the dark without wanting to scream. (But that would disturb the baby!)