I wish I can follow and read all 200 blogs but…

So after my attempt to finish a one-page copy about Pay-Per-Click advertising, I remember that I have to clean-up my blog subscription list. I get overwhelmed whenever I log-in to my reader: instead of reading, I quickly log-out and read a book instead. Not good.

I promise not to unsubscribe to items with fair judgment. Each blog needs to argue its case: why they deserve to sit on my reader and be read at night when Daniel goes to bed, along with blogs that I love. I have to be careful, I might miss out on something great: something that will knock me off my senses, inspire me to go back on track when I feel like procrastinating, give me an epiphany of some sort, or just entertain me for the day. So I run my eyes — without batting my eyelashes — through my reader list: from top to bottom, from left side to the right side. I am overwhelmed once again. Too much information, too little time. No wonder I feel this way, I have like 200 blogs in my list. Two hundred blogs!!! How did I accumulate all that?

My mind flashes back to the time when I spent hours upon hours at the stationery section of SM: it has to be one of the best parts of SM, second only to the clothes and trinkets section. I was poking around stacks of neatly arranged notebooks, envelopes, and stationery sets. I was always attracted to beautiful things. I absolutely adored pretty and fragrant Korean-made stationery sets that I always end up buying a truckload and looking at them for hours. They’re my guilty pleasures and I feel good when I see them–such beautiful illustrations, pastel and bright colors, friendly to the nostrils, elegant, cute, yadda yadda. I have countless pink notebooks and stationery sets that I keep for years only to realize that there’s no way I’ll write on them all. Not when there’s Microsoft word and Gmail. Not when I want a reply right away.

I feel exactly the same way with my reader. I feel that I accumulated too much that I don’t know what to read anymore. So, without further ado, let me get started.

I’m definitely keeping those blogs with really nice pastel-colored photos and short, meaningful entries. I love photos as much as I love makeup. I carry my camera everywhere I go, just in case I find something interesting to capture. I love looking at life, and capturing it.

So, moving down the list, I see some food blogs. I love food and I have invested so much time familiarizing myself with all kinds of herbs, noddles, and cheese. And I spend so much time in the kitchen, whipping something nice and tasty for my family. I take offense when some people casually quip that I cannot cook. That’s like, ten years ago when I lived in a dorm at UP where we couldn’t even heat-up noodles inside the room; I fell in line to get food from the concessionaire and they were not pleasing to taste at all: either they were bland or over-seasoned, or just plain awful, you’d rather drink water than thrust them down your throat. Can you imagine how deprived I was of good food? Four years! Anyway, I was totally bowled over and had a sudden change of heart the first time I saw Top Chef– that’s when I fell in-love with different kinds of cuisines that I am willing to go far for them.

Now, I treat food with so much respect. And I don’t just eat it, I savor and celebrate it. To delicious meals and beyond. Sometimes I challenge my husband to a taste test, which always results to eating more. So, yes, nobody’s touching my favorite food blogs.

Then there’s a row of technology and Web 2.0 blogs. One of them is my favorite, Mashable. Google Analytics blog? I don’t remember reading a single entry from it. I’m keeping Mashable and letting go of analytics. I have to keep myself abreast with the latest news. And speaking of the latest news, Twitter gets new $100M funding from multiple investors. I should resurrect my Twitter account, pronto!

And why on earth did I subscribe to Craigslist? Unsubscribe.

And like most women who read Vanity Fair and Vogue, I subscribe to Elle Magazine’s fashion blog. Those dresses at London Fashion Week that leaves you looking, wanting, and yearning… and reaching out for your credit card in a seamless way, like you always do when you are in a boutique and you feel, without a doubt, that you and those nice pair of purple boots belong together. Then you picture yourself strutting in them, all eyes on you, and you feel great. These dresses, as I look at them for 10 minutes now, must be delicately handmade with contrasting textures and flirtatious cuts. Who doesn’t want to wear them? Next.

Traveling to Hong Kong feeds, unsubscribe. What I get are politics-related blogs anyway.

Blogs that conduct daily quizzes, give out gifts, and publish daily promo codes, unsubscribe.

Mommy blogs that don’t talk about motherhood at all, unsubscribe.

Fun posts, retain. I need them when I feel down, which only happens when there’s tragedy of whatever kind.

And those travel blogs are definitely keepers. Sherman’s Travel is the best.

Blogs that don’t get updated for more than a month, unsubscribe.

Forty more blogs that I never read, unsubscribe.

Blogs about their daughters (with beautiful photos of them in pretty, flowery dresses), unsubscribe. (These remind me that I need to have a daughter…and I am not ready yet.)

My friends’ blogs, retain. (I will commit bloody murder if I do otherwise.)

A French blog? I don’t read French. Unbscribe.

There. I successfully let go of 160+ blogs from my reader. That’s a lot of junk. I feel so much better now. I just have enough blogs to read and follow…and I mean really read and follow. Like reading and looking at the authors’ lives from afar; like playing Sims, except that I don’t have to feed them, make them fall in-love, or report them to the Department of Welfare for abandoning their toddler. I am a mere reader here trying to visualize what they are going and have gone through. And I love it that way.

Cheers to an organized reader!

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