To sleep, perchance to have dinner with the family

REGION/CYBERSCENES

In her book "On Death and Dying ," Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Traveling through the blogosphere over the last year, Cyberscenes has observed what could be called the five stages of blogging.

The first four are: Stage 1: enthusiasm; Stage 2: fatigue; Stage 3: guilt; and Stage 4: existential crisis. Stage 5 is either a) continued blogging or b) cyber-death, depending on what happens in Stage 4. While grief is largely a private affair, blogging is by definition a public one, so we the audience get to see these five-stage dramas unfold. This month, two local blogs were either in or nearing Stage 4.

In Waltham, the Borderline blog was deep in existential crisis mode. In a Jan. 27, posting titled "Rethinking Borderline: Should I continue this blog?" the blogger lamented both how difficult it is to find good postings and the apparent unpopularity of some recent posts.

"I'm writing this post right now at 10:30 pm on a Saturday night," the post stated. "So blogging is taking away from my free time, which I could otherwise be spending with my family, or doing other more productive things around the house, or just relaxing."

At the end, Borderline left the to-blog-or-not-to-blog question up to his audience. "So what should I do? Sell it? Take a break? Open it up to other writers? Give it up?"

Read more in the latest Cyberscenes column in Globe West.

-- Ralph Ranalli

P.S. If you know of a good local blog in the Globe West area that you think deserves some attention, pleased e-mail Cyberscenes about it.