Blah, Blah, Blah[g]...

Everyone has a blog.  Or so it seems.  Yes, I realize that it is counterintuitive that I would use my blog to complaint about the overabundance of blogs.  Or, is it?  Truth be told, I'm not really complaining that there are too many.  I'm more bothered that there are too many good ones that I want to read regularly, and not enough time in the day, week, month, or even year, to read them all and keep up.  This has been weighing on me for awhile, so I thought it may be useful to discuss.  I categorize blogs as follows:

1) Blogs of people I know.  I LOVE these and am committed to checking in on them as often as is possible, which is not nearly as often as I would like.  I love them because they are written by people I *actually* know and have pictures of adorable kids/pets/other family I *actually* know (or whose parents I actually know in cases where I haven't seen them since said adorable kids/pets/other family came into the picture).  They give me the opportunity to feel like I'm kind of keeping up with what is going on in their lives, even if we don't talk that often.  I count the blogs of a couple amazing photographers in this group because, well, who doesn't love looking at beautiful pictures.  And it requires very little reading.

2) Blogs of random people that started off small and somehow exploded into a regional or national sensation:  There are a couple of these that I would really like to keep up with everyday (hello, Momastery, I'm talking to you) because they are outstanding...which, I'm sure, is why the explosion in popularity.  But, the fact is-- I just can't.  More about that in a bit.

3) Professional blogs of people/companies who have blogs because they think have to:  These, to me, are almost a complete waste.  I think some companies feel like they have to have a blog because it's the hip thing to do, and "our public" want some insight into the inner workings of our company.  No, I want a functional user-friendly website where I can find all the how-to's/recipes/coupons, etc. without having to read a blog because I don't have time to read your blog anyway.

I think all of this is to share that at some point I have become overwhelmed by all there is out there in Internet land that I *want* to see, experience, learn.  I now know of enough websites or blogs that I would truly like to invest time to take in the content, but I now don't have the time to do it.  Whereas before, I would go to the web if I had something specific I needed to know.  I'm not exactly sure what changed, but I think I really could spend all day just surfing the web, reading blogs that interest me and, if there's time left over, checking websites.  That used to seem like a total waste to me and I didn't quite get how people could do it.  Now, between all the blogs I already ready and the ones I'd love to really get into, Pinterest, Facebook, Houzz, imaginary vacation planning and menu planning, I could literally have spend an entire day or more.

The point?  Nothing really, except that I hope that I'm not alone in the battle between my desire to spend an abundance of time online (don't even get me started on the shopping!) and my need to keep my job and family intact which prevents me from attending to said first desire.  Show me some love so I don't feel like such a ridiculous mess.  Or, in the alternative, tell me how you do it.  How do you spend time on all these great blogs and still manage the daily duties of work, family, personal care?  What is your great balancing act?