Living in a Blogable World

I realize that I've become a terrible correspondent since starting this blog two years ago. Emails once dutifully answered languish in my in-box or, worse, moved to the folder of the sendee where they gather digital dust. I gaze down the list every so often and think, "Gosh, if I reply to that email now, I can avoid that person saying 'Well, at least it didn't take you a year to get back to me!'"

Blogging is an easy way out. It doesn't hold me to sending individual, personalized emails to each friend, yet it lets my friends "in the know" about my blog know what I'm up to on an almost daily basis. It's a lazy man's dream. I've also innocently coerced some of my friends to start up their own blogs so I could just surf my way over during my lunch break and see what they were up to. Blogs are a very cool tool, but I wonder if my efforts of keeping in touch, at least via email, with friends is quietly being jeopardized by the quick and easy method of posting to a very public blog. I intentionally do not talk about several topics on here because I don't need the general public knowing that much about me and I also do not know who does read this blog. It's not exactly wise to rip someone up one side and down another online whether it's a friend, co-worker, or situation if it's going to cause problems later on. People have lost their jobs by doing such. They've also ruined relationships. I guess I believe if you have issues in your life, deal with them with the related people, not online where the other parties involved don't have an easy chance to respond.

My final thought is that I really should buckle down and get to answering some of those emails. Time is always an issue here. I have no concrete solutions. I've seen other friends run into the same dillema when it comes to time. One friend recently emailed me to let me know he was alive and that he was posting updates to his blog. We used to talk/email/visit quite a bit more in the past before the advent of blogs in my circle of friends. What are your thoughts?