Boo! We're back.
Some of you may have noticed that we have not written a single post or commented anywhere in the blogosphere for the last 7 days. Why? That's a good question. Are we crazy? Some may think so. Unfortunately, we're not. Well maybe just a little.
Being the blogoholics that we are, we were bouncing ideas off each other for a post and we thought, what if? What if we didn't answer our emails, post anything or comment anywhere for a week? Would anyone notice? Would anyone miss us? Would we be able to restrain ourselves? Arggghhh! Has anyone ever done a test like this? Does it matter? Would our traffic increase or decrease? What will our friends think if we don't answer their emails or comment on their brilliant posts? Will they be offended? Will they understand after we explain? Who are our real friends? This is the basis of our little experiment.
So, we decided to go for it. We hesitantly checked ourselves into the Sellsius° blogoholics anonymous club and gave up our blogger keys. We added some spice to the test by only being able to surf the web using bloglines. No direct access to our favorite blogs. This had some serious consequences. Can you guess? Ok, we'll just tell you. This meant that we could not see the comments of each post. What? Are you kidding me? That's where the juicy stuff is. Oh the pain. Can you feel it? We eagerly waited and watched the blogosphere through our bloglines lenses. Oh the juicy stories that were taking place. Surely a little comment would be ok wouldn't it? Snap out of it I told Joe. We must endure the pain. This will be worth it.
We wanted to add some fuel to the fire before we started the test but didn't know how. Would we leave clues on other blogs in the comment section? Would we send out an email? This was a tough decision. Hey how about this. For our last post, why don't we put up something weird. Something to make people think, "What the heck does that mean"? So we pondered. Lightbulb! Being the huge Matrix fan that I am, I thought, "There is No Spoon". What? In the movie, Neo is on a journey to find out what the matrix is. His mission is to find out what is real and what is not. It's a quest to find the truth. He is presented with a choice. Take the red pill to find the truth, see reality and to see just how far the rabbit hole goes. Take the blue pill and you will remain content in ignorant bliss. Well, we wanted to know what was real and what was not so we chose the red pill. We also wanted others to think about what was the truth and what was not. We immediately applied this question to a number of hotly contested topics that have been embedded within the blogosphere. Can you guess what the topics are? Sure you can. They are right in front of you. They are the things that cause you to take a position, pro or con. They are the things that we have been spoon fed to believe to be true, without actually challenging the logic ourselves. They are the things we are afraid to touch or speak of. They are the things that often go unnoticed. Just look more closely and you will see.
Our experiment started on Monday October 30th. We both had fresh legs and were ready to go. Our bloglines feed reader was full and we went through everyone on our blogroll and then some. There were lots of yummy posts published by some of our favorite bloggers. How exciting. Halfway through the morning things started to get busy. We had emails coming in and comments on our blog yet we could not respond. This was frustrating but at the same time, relaxing in a weird "Hey, I'm on vacation" kind of way.
Joe started to feel the pressure and wanted to write a post and comment on a few blogs. Eventually he caved. He left bloglines and went straight to many of our favorite blogs directly. Say it ain't so Joe. Although difficult, I still held the line as my partner went to the darkside. Not only did he read the comments, but he actually posted one in the Matrix. Oh no. Would agent Smith come after us now? Joe said, "Don't worry. I'll be back in a jiffy." He found a great post by Jonathan Miller of the Matrix Real Estate Blog. Deja vu? Maybe. He thought that some of the answers we were looking for could be found here. Was Miller the almighty oracle? He decided to post a comment to find out. We waited for an answer but the oracle did not provide one.
And so our experiment continued. Some people started asking questions as to what happened to us. Some offered advice on how to find the elusive spoon. Emails started to come in. Comments on our "There is no Spoon" post started to appear. Did people actually notice we had not posted anything? Did they care? Did they miss us? It seemed that some might have. That was a nice feeling. We missed you guys too :) It was becoming very clear to us that blogging has really affected us. We not only missed posting our thoughts but we also missed the great conversations that happen after a post. We're blogoholics for sure!
Then it happened. On Friday, a post came across our feed reader from our friend Christine Forgione from the NY Houses 4 Sale blog, Sellsius° is STILL searching for the spoon. Wow! Someone actually wrote about us not posting. We didn't think that would happen. The post highlighted many other great posts by other bloggers too. Well done Christine!
Then it happened again. Deja vu? Jonathan Dalton wrote, Analyzing the Spoon. Amazingly creative! A must read. We were very impressed and humbled that Jonathan took the time to read into our message, There is No Spoon, and expand on it. Bravo!
Is there a glitch in the matrix? Another blogger writes about our disappearing act. Pittsburgh Homes Daily wrote, The Tale of Sellsius. As Robert Frost said, "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." A brilliant poem indeed. What can we say? Thank You PHD!
There were so many people that we had failed to respond to whether in a comment or email. Now that you know what we were up to, we hope you understand. I'm sure we'll be busy writing back for a couple of days. But in the meantime, we really wanted to thank Teresa Boardman, [just noticed Joe posted a comment here during our test - Arrrgghhh - I should have tightened his straight jacket more], from The St. Paul Real Estate Blog for hosting such a fun and creative halloween pumpkin carving contest. We were shocked and humbled to have been tied for 1st place along with REBlogGirl. Thank you all! Can't wait till next year.
An interesting side affect had occurred. By freeing ourselves from our keyboards, we actually had more quality time to spend with our families. Who'd a thought? This was a nice feeling. As blogoholics, sometimes we fail to realize how much time we spend writing, reading and surfing. Now we know better. We need to set limits. We need to get our priorities straight. Family always comes first.
Our social experiment was turning out to be more interesting than we had imagined. You can theorize the pro's and con's about something all you want but until you actually do it, you will never know the truth. It's a little scary to try something new and it's definitely not easy. Is there risk? Of course. But with no risk you will never get a chance to enjoy the rewards. "Only those who do nothing make no mistakes", by an unknown author.
Statistically Speaking, we wanted to see if there was any change in our traffic pattern. We did notice that the first few days our traffic increased, almost double our normal average. Why? Lot's of Google juice I guess. It seemed that our halloween and ghost story posts were picked up by many search engines. We also noticed many readers kept coming back over and over. Interesting.
As the week moved along, our traffic did decrease to our average level and then mysteriously fell to below average levels. Hmmm? Could it be that all our readers had left us? Maybe. We think that because we had not posted or commented, it had caused our readers to look elsewhere. It also crossed our minds that without posting often and on a regular basis, it would hurt us in the organic results of search engines. This was something that we thought might happen. Just our opinion.
So, was it worth it? The short answer is yes. We learned quite a bit but we were not strong enough to stick to our stringent guidelines. Maybe they were too harsh. We wonder if any of you could do better. Can you search the web by only using bloglines or a similar feed reader for a week? No posting or responding to comments on your blog. No reading or posting comments on other blogs. No answering emails or phone calls, unless it's a client or customer that has nothing to do with blogging. Can anyone succeed where we have not?
If we have helped you think more about what your spoon is and whether it exists, then great. We all have questions and should not be afraid of asking them.
"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." - Abraham Lincoln
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