24) Orphan Blogs

While The Plan has been sailing smoothly along so far, it's come with a price. Like the new baby in the family, it has commanded my full attention at the expense of my first blog, nataliefoundit. Although I had intended to maintain both projects, posting on nataliefoundit has reached a standstill.

There must be hundreds of thousands of orphaned blogs out there. Whether a result of a time issue or a wane of interest, how many blogs are now ghost sites frozen in time? No matter how engaging the content once was, it grows less relevant with each passing day. Aside from the rare occasion where the author deletes his blog in its entirety, think of how much content exists online, unchanged and largely unseen.

Some have suggested a blog adoption system. Not unlike that for dogs and cats, those not wanting to start from scratch could search for and find abandoned blogs to pick up and continue. Content is resurrected, instead of being left to stagnate. But somehow, the system doesn't translate. Blogs are intellectual property, and people are rarely willing to give up control. On the flip side, there's something very personal about starting your own blog. Recycling someone else's content just wouldn't be the same.

nataliefoundit is a standing representation of things that I thought were interesting at a certain point in my life. Given this, maybe blogs don't all have to be relevant or timely. Perhaps some exist purely as a digital snapshot of ourselves.