Joi on Becoming boring - the Blues of an A-lister ?

Joi Ito wrote a note in which he is wondering whether his blog is becoming boring, because he seems much more conscious of the feedback he will receive on certain posts/topics:

[...] I realized that there are a great number of things that I would have posted to my blog a year ago, but I won't now. I have argued a number of times that this is my blog and if you don't like it don't read it. However, as I read criticisms in the comments and on other blogs about what I write, I have become increasingly sensitive about what I say here. The criticism is often valid. "Check your facts before you post." "Read before you write." "Don't be so self-obsessed." "That was stupid." "The tone of your post was offensive to me." "So this guy posts every time he's 'off' to somewhere new. Is he boasting about his travel?" I know it shouldn't, but these voices yap at me in my head and cause a kind of chilling effect. I fear that my jokes will be misinterpreted and the irony lost. I fear that someone will take offense. I fear that a post will sound boastful. [...]

Mary echoes Joi's theme in her post "Baby bloggers are much more fun":

They have no constraints.. they are less known.. and they don't have as many relationships usually.. so when they see something or hear it, they blog it and it's fun.

Blogging for a while, and working in tech, I won't blog anyone who's paid me money, unless I was an employee.. so Technorati is okay, but I'm just not comfortable blogging clients. And then there's all the secrets people tell you, and well.. those are offlimits as well.

So I'm telling you, I'm officially boring. Mainly because of these constraints.. it's just hard sometimes to say what I really think, but maybe for other reasons as well. Geez. [...]

This reminds me a post from danah boyd a while back, in which she concluded:

[...] I almost stopped blogging a few months back because i was tired of the expectations.  Seriously, if i could give any feedback to readers, it would be lay off, chill the fuck out and don't expect/demand things from the writers you're reading. For me (and many of my friends), blogging is an exercise of love, not an effort to meet an audience's needs. Having to face expectations every time i go to my blog makes me feel absolutely disgusting, like i've become some sort of blogging whore. [...]

At the end of the day, it's your blog, so post about anything you want. And if you feel boring, stop blogging for a while, or blog less and only about a few topics of interest.

I personally find that blogs become boring when they feed you with posts that are "forced", i.e they relate to topics that have been much talked about already, or not enough research has gone into preparing/fact checking them. They are just there to fulfill the daily posting quota. That is when you get called out - and lose some hard-earned reputation if this happens too often.

Besides that, blog about what, and however often, you feel like. Worst that can happen is that people unsubscribe from your feed and go read other blogs. The good news is that there is enough echo in the blogosphere that anything important you talk about will find its way in the aggregator of your "non-readers" through one or two hops.

Last suggestion: ask our mutual buddy Loic how he manages to keep on blogging with all the crap he is getting on his French blog on quite a large range of topics... He might have useful insights.