Excessive Blogging--A Heresy in the Home

My previous post focused on the mostly sedentary life of a blogger--perhaps leading to a few of us unwilling to show a photo of a fat slob in front of a computer screen. Excessive blogging is actually a heresy in the home that pretends we are only a distant intellectual being and avoids our physical being. The internet doesn't permit a real smile (only an artificial smilie) or hand shaking, and mostly avoids the hearing of our voices.

The danger is especially great if we blog too much with children at home. We may believe that someday our blogs will penetrate to our young children. Yet children are trained in truth by mostly their overhearing external discussions--preferably in person where the child can hear both sides of the conversation.

Our legacy will not be our blogs but our children. I've assigned a scoring system that ranks the different kinds of discussions we have with each other and that can influence our children for good:

• Old times -- parent to friend in presence of child (2 pts)

• Recent past--parent to friend on phone (1 pt)

• Now--parent to others by email and blog (0 pts)

The best training is when a child can hear both sides of an adult conversation (2 points), --provided the parent realizes that part of the conversation that attracts the child is a good teaching experience. In second place (with 1 point) are phone calls with good Catholic pro-life friends. My children say they learned many good things that way, even though they really didn't like Mom to be on the phone so long. Blogging is dead last with zero points because the young child cannot read or is uninterested in reading a non-fiction blog.

Blogging is an extremely effective way of evangelization, in addition to explaining the truth to fellow Catholics and giving and gaining support from each other in times of difficulty. A little alcohol is very good too. But some people seem intoxicated with the web (and I'm finding that it is easy to become addicted).

So just as Alcoholics Anonymous has some questions for a possible alcoholic, here are my questions for bloggers:

1. Are you searching the web constantly for news items on which to comment?
2. Are you praying enough that God sends good ideas for your next post?
3. Is blogging a substitute for cleaning or cooking duties in your house?
4. Does blogging interfere with your job responsibilities?
5. Do you spend more than about two hours a day on blogging?
   
6. Do you blog during times when your spouse or children are entitled to your help?
7. Do you believe your blogging will 'save the world'? Where did you get that crazy idea?
8. Have you recently scanned some secular posts where the vacuous nature of the posts are so apparent? Are you beginning to copy these blogs with your own inconsequential posts?
9. Is your good health and well-being being jeopardized by becoming sedentary and overweight due to excessive blogging?

So what's the cure for addicted bloggers? Think about it. How many really good posts can you produce a week or a month? I'm surprised that more joint blogs aren't being developed, such as the Shrine of the Holy Whapping. Is this type of blog with several contributors a partial answer to excessive blogging?