It really does seem like every time I get close to putting figurative pen to virtual paper (oh, alright, fingertips to keyboard, on this particular edit screen) it’s with an apology or an excuse in my fingers, either for not having much to say, or for not writing anything of interest or, indeed, at all.

So sitting here listening to Karen Dalton’s It Hurts Me Too, I’m trying to think of something to say that isn’t an excuse for either silence or busyness, or both.

Hmm.

I used to be good at this weblog mallarkey. The funny thing is, at one point, my site was considered one of the essential BritBlogs - it was among the first, and at one point had a pretty significant (quantity, not quality) readership. There was a lot of traffic, a lot of linky lurve, a lot of (to borrow a phrase from another erstwhile blogger) backslapping wank, and a lot of blogmeets. Oh my, the blogmeets. We met in pubs, we met in parks, we met in…more pubs, actually. Some of us even met in the kitchen in the morning before we’d brushed our teeth either because a) we were flatmates or b) we were sleeping together. I use the term “we” broadly, you understand. And neither of the above at once, at least AFAIK.

At one point - and I’m being tongue in cheek here - I was jokingly called the queen of British Blogdom. This is, of course, hilarious, because frankly it could have been anyone at all - I just happened to be vaguely high-profile (though it’s all extremely relative, natch) and had time and energy to organise and attend blogmeets, back when there were only ever going to be twenty geeks in an upstairs room. I also was able to talk about nothing quite comfortably with meatspace strangers, and so I did. A lot.

There were blog trading cards featuring the supposed A-list (I was there), splinter groups and oh, the endless conversations about what constituted a blogmeet, and where one drew the line between that and a group of friends (who happened to first meet via their chosen web updating method) meeting for a drink.

There were awards before the Guardian had even heard of blogs, memes and anti-memes (look deeper…). There were blogrings and cliques and spats over blogrolls before there was any possibility of automating such a thing, let alone giving it a name. There were features in local and national papers, in magazines, and on the radio at home and abroad, plus website mentions galore. I spoke up, when asked, gave good quote and redesigned my site every five minutes in an attempt to offer something pleasant to the increased audience.

Then gradually, it all changed. I won’t go into it here - those of you who have been around over the bulk of the last five years may already know some of what went on (and if you were around, but don’t know what I’m talking about, then feel free to ask - you can guess my address…) but suffice it to say that it changed the way I approached this blog, and blogging, and the whole concept of web personality/personalities.

Bit by bit, I drew away from all that had kept me amused and energised for the first few years - not the friendships I’d made through blogging (they stayed, mostly) - but I became more uncomfortable with putting myself on the web, with letting there be that much information and personality and identity out there, pinned down and claimed only by my lousy web design skills.

Maybe it was the first time I found my content on someone else’s site. Maybe it was the first time I received a personally abusive comment. Maybe it was the first time someone used their own blog to twist my words back at me. Maybe it was the first time a stalker tracked me down and called me at home. Maybe it was the first time I censored myself on my own site. Whatever caused it, the whole experience was souring, and I didn’t like it.

Time passed. Without sounding like granny, there’s a whole new generation of Brit Bloggers for whom not.so.soft means nothing.at.all. My traffic has dropped to a trickle of its former statistic, and my mailbox is now full of spam, not comments, questions and praise.

I still feel connected to the world. I still feel like this is my front porch, a place where friends old, new and undiscovered can come over and catch up for a while. These days, they don’t come as often or stay as long - but then, that’s probably got a lot to do with the lack of updates, or the paucity of anything interesting whatsoever - an unfortunate side effect of increased pressure (and excitement) at work, learning to drive, a happy marriage, a demanding cat and a lot of secretive tinkering.

Damn, there’s that apology/excuse again. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through a whole post without it cropping up. Sorry. Again.