AaronGleeman.com

I am moving back into my dorm room over the weekend, so the next time you hear from me will be from my tiny little room on the University of Minnesota campus.

Moving back to school brought up something in my mind that I wanted to talk about here. This blog first started way back in August of 2002. The audience was almost non-existent at the time and I often wrote about my personal life, along with baseball. Sometimes I told a story about my family or about my dog, sometimes I shared tales of dorm life.

As my audience has grown to much greater heights than I ever could have imagined, I have pulled back significantly from writing about stuff like that. For whatever reason, it seemed fun and interesting to share a funny story about something that happened to me with the 50 people who read the website in 2002. Now, with thousands of people stopping by here to read about baseball every week, I feel the need to...well, write about baseball.

It's an interesting situation (to me, at least) and one that I imagine many writers have gone through. There is a lot more freedom involved in having a small but loyal following. Technically I have the exact same freedom now that I had then, but there is something about having a much larger audience that limits that.

I still share funny moments from my life or interesting stories from my past, but I do so rarely and only when I am sure they are interesting. Back 10 or 12 months ago, if something funny happened to me it would go up here, whether the story was a "10" or a "7." Now, it's mostly only 10s.

I bring all this up for two reasons. First and foremost, it is something I have been thinking about lately. Hopefully anyone who has read this website for a long time knows me as someone who doesn't hold back thoughts or emotions often, and I didn't want to do so in this case either. It involves my writing and this blog, which means it involves you as a reader, so I wanted to discuss it.

Second, I think I'd like to get some feedback from all you guys out there who stop by on a regular basis to read this blog. Those of you who have been around for a long time, do you miss my stories about dorm life and other stuff? Those of you who have only been around for a short while, would you be bothered if I occasionally stepped away from baseball to share some funny stories or anecdotes?

Anyway, this is just something I've been pondering. If this were a year ago, you would probably be treated to a Monday entry about how my move back to school over the weekend went. But for some reason, stuff like that seems silly to put on this blog now.

I would like to say what I've heard many writers say, which is that they write for themselves. That is true for me to a certain extent, but I still consider the fact that, come Monday, there will be 2,000 people reading this website, not 50. For whatever reason, that makes a difference to me.

In honor of my move back to school and in honor of me thinking about whether or not this blog should be all baseball, all the time, here is a favorite entry of mine from way back on March 7, 2003...

The Ladies Man

I'm one of those people (usually referred to as "writers") who is infinitely more comfortable expressing his thoughts via written word, as opposed to actual speech or human contact. Truth be told, when I'm around people I don't know very well I get nervous and self conscious, so I tend to be very careful with my words, which leads to an inability to express myself in the same manner I do here.