For Some, the Blogging Never Stops
TO celebrate four years of marriage， Richard Wiggins and his wife， Judy Matthews， recently spent a week in Key West， Fla（基韋斯特市 基韋斯特島上美國佛羅里達州南端一城市）。 Early on the morning of their anniversary， Ms. Matthews heard her husband get up and go into the bathroom. He stayed there for a long time.
“I didn't hear any water running， so I wondered what was going on，” Ms. Matthews said. When she knocked on the door， she found him seated with his laptop（膝上型電腦） balanced on his knees， typing into his Web log， a collection of observations about the technical world， over a wireless link.
Blogging is a pastime for many， even a livelihood（n.生計， 謀生） for a few. For some， it becomes an （①）。 Such bloggers often feel compelled to write several times daily and feel anxious if they don't keep up. As they spend more time hunkered（vi. 蹲下） over their computers， they neglect family， friends and jobs. They blog at home， at work and on the road. They blog openly or sometimes， like Mr. Wiggins， quietly so as not to call attention to their habit.
The number of bloggers has grown quickly， thanks to sites like blogger.com， which makes it easy to set up a blog. Technorati（一個blog索引站點）， a blog-tracking service， has counted some 2.5 million blogs.
Of course， most of those millions are abandoned or， at best， maintained infrequently. For many bloggers， the novelty（n.新穎， 新奇， 新鮮， 新奇的事物） soon （②）and their persistence fades.
Sometimes， too， the realization that no one is reading sets in. A few blogs have thousands of readers， but never have so many people written so much to be read by so few. By Jupiter Research's estimate， only 4 percent of online users read blogs.
Indeed， if a blog is likened（vt.把……比喻成（to）； 使象） to a conversation between a writer and readers， bloggers like Mr. Wiggins are having conversations largely with themselves.
Mr. Wiggins， 48， a senior information technologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing （n.蘭辛美國密執根州首府）， does not know how many readers he has； he suspects it's not many. But that does not seem to bother him.
“I'm just ③getting something off my chest，” he said.
?、躈or is he deterred （vt.妨礙， 阻礙， 延緩， 制止， 使躊躇）by the fact that he toils（vi.辛苦工作， 勞動（at； for）） for hours at a time on his blog for no money. He gets satisfaction in other ways. “Sometimes there's an 'I told you so' aspect to it，” he said. Recent ruminations（n.反芻， 沉思） on wigblog .blogspot.com have focused on Gmail， Google's new e-mail service. Mr. Wiggins points with pride to Wigblog posts that voiced early privacy concerns about Gmail.
Perhaps a chronically small audience is a blessing. For it seems that the more popular a blog becomes， the more some bloggers feel the need to post.
Mr. Pierce， who lives in Hollywood and works as a scheduler in the entertainment industry， said blogging began to feel like an addiction（n.沉溺； 熱中； 嗜好； 吸毒成癮）when he noticed that he would rather be with his computer than with his girlfriend - for technical reasons.
“She's got an iMac， and I don't like her computer，” Mr. Pierce said. When he is at his girlfriend's house， ⑤他感覺就像“熱鍋上的螞蟻”We have little fights because I want to go home and write my thing，“ he said.
Mr. Pierce described the rush he gets from what he called “the fix” provided by his blog. “The pleasure response is twofold（adj.， adv.兩倍， 雙重），” he said. “You can have instant gratification（n.滿意）； you're going to hear about something really good or bad instantly. And if I feel like I've written something good， it's enjoyable to go back and read it.”
And， he said， “like most addictions， those feelings go away quickly. So I have to do it again and again.”
Joseph Lorenzo Hall， 26， a graduate student at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley（伯克利） who has studied bloggers， said that for some people blogging has supplanted（代替， 取代） e-mail as a way to procrastinate（v.延遲， 耽擱） at work.
People like Mr. Pierce， who devote much of their free time to the care and feeding of their own blogs and posting to other blogs， do so largely because it makes them feel productive even if it is not a paying job.
Mr. Wiggins has missed deadline after deadline at Searcher， an online periodical（n.期刊， 雜志） for which he is a paid contributor.
Barbara Quint， the editor of the magazine， said she did all she could to get him to deliver his columns（專欄） on time. Then she discovered that Mr. Wiggins was busily posting articles to his blog instead of sending her the ones he had promised， she said. “Here he is working all night on something read by five second cousins and a dog， and I'm willing to pay him，” she said.
Ms. Quint has grown more understanding of his reasons， if not entirely sympathetic. “The Web's illusion of immortality（n.不朽， 不朽的聲名）is sometimes more attractive than actual cash，” she said.
Mr. Jarvis characterizes the blogging way of life as a routine rather than an obsession. “It's a habit，” he said. “What you're really doing is telling people about something that they might find interesting. When that becomes part of your life， when you start thinking in blog， it becomes part of you.”
Suffering from a similar form of “blog fatigue，” Bill Barol， a freelance writer in Santa Monica， Calif.， simply stopped altogether after four years of nearly constant blogging.
“It was starting to feel like work， and it was never supposed to be a job，” Mr. Barol said. “It was supposed to be an anti-job.”
Even with some 200 visitors to his blog each day， he has not posted to his blog since returning from a month of travel.
Still， Mr. Barol said， he does not rule out（排除在外； 拒絕考慮； 使……不可能） a return to blogging someday.
“There is this seductive adj.誘人的 thing that happens， this kind of snowball-rolling-down-a-hill thing， where the sheer momentum（n.動力， 要素） of several years' posting becomes very keenly felt，” he said. “And the absence of posting feels like - I don't know， laziness or something.”
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