I had a great 4th of July weekend. 4th of July is becoming one of my families favorite holidays. We buy fireworks, grill on the front lawn, have all the neighbors over, set up a jumpy castle and just enjoy the weekend. It’s a blast. My daughters love playing with the sparklers and smoke bombs. It’s great to spend time with friends and neighbors.
One of the reasons we enjoy the 4th so much is because it’s such an active holiday. Unlike many of the other holidays; which are more family oriented due to their religious nature, I see the 4th as a community holiday. The 4th gets people outside together; playing games, camping, grilling, going to the beach etc. Similar to Coleman camping gear‘snew campaign; the 4th of July is like the original social network.
It’s the active nature of this past weekend that’s causing me a little anxiety.
I was offline almost the entire weekend. I blogged just once, yet my goal is to blog everyday. I stayed away from most of my other social networking, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. as well. I’m OK with the decrease in my social networking presence, but I am not quite sure I’m OK with not blogging. As I said; my goal is to blog everyday. I’ve averaged 6.2 blog posts a week for the past year. Clearly I’ve missed a few. But this weekend, I didn’t blog 3 days out of 4.
I like blogging. I don’t see it as a chore. However, determining content can be hard. It takes me about an hour or two a day to post. A good 35 to 40 percent of that time is spent editing. If you read this blog you know I still miss a lot of stuff. But hey, where I lack in grammar and editing skills I try to make up with content. Despite the fact I don’t see it as a chore, it can be tough to “crank out” a good post quickly. In order to get it done, I have to be targeted, focused, and take time out to determine the subject, write, edit, and post. This is hard during a holiday like the 4th of July.
I’m not sure where I stand on this. Emotionally, I am OK with it. I spent the time with my family. I was completely engaged in off-line activities that matter. It was a great weekend. I had a blast. Intellectually and logically, I’m not OK with it. I’ve committed to blogging everyday. Many of the blogs I read everyday (all though not over this past weekend 
) manage to have new posts up over the holiday. So intellectually, I’m not OK with missing the days.
I’m going to spend some time this week figuring out my philosophy on balancing my offline presence and with my online presence, because sometimes I just can’t be two places at once.
I want to know what this community thinks. Did you miss there not being any posts this weekend? Would you have read them if there were? What do you think? How do you balance your online and offline presence? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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