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Whenever I make my introduction,

"Hi, let me introduce myself. I'm Princessa, and I'm a full time Blogger."

People tend to look at me in a really weird manner.

I'm not surprise, of course. After all, Singapore isn't really opened to this so-called "career opportunity" yet.

The topic today is based on an article written by Matt Richtel and published in The New York Times.

^{Image by Mashable.}

According to "them", many of us bloggers will soon be found face down at our keyboards, our final words pixelating out into the universe.

SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

In the article, Matt Richtel highlights that in the last few months, 2 prominent bloggers have died suddenly,

1. Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack.

2. Marc Orchant, also a tech blogger, died at 50 of a massive coronary.

And a 3rd, Om Malik, 41, didn't die, but survived a heart attack.

There are also other bloggers complaining of weight loss or gain (as written in one of my previous entries), sleep disorders (I'm still awake), exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

There are no official diagnosis of death by blogging, but the fast and constant pace of blogging may eventually take a toll on both mind and body. After all, no one is capable of consistently maintaining regiment of thousands of words per day produced fluently at a moment's notice, and bloggers' attempts to exceed their finite capacities eventually crash, temporarily or permanently.

The moral of the story?

Blogging equals stress. Extreme stress.

I'm one who swims in the pool that is blogging, and I can't disagree that the stress can be rather intense, but not as intense as the article has made it sound to be.

As a blogger by occupation, in other words dependent on readership (aka traffic) to earn a decent income, I have to constantly update my blog to entice readers to return.

The higher the readership, the higher the value of your blog, thus, the more money you get.

However, bloggers are very much similar to writer, and time to time, we tend to get hit with a writer's block and "bang", I got nothing (to write that is).

No updates equals to a decline in readership. Which is bad for business no doubt.

So as "dangerous" as it may be, I will continue blogging and looking towards further expanding the possibilities in blogging as well.

Reason?

Though there seems to be a decline in ad revenues for most newspapers not only in the States, but in Europe as well. The internet news revenues on the other hand, continue to thrive, reaching 18.8% growth in the last quarter.

This alone makes a good reason to "not give up" and strive forward.

Furthermore...

The "power of the Internet" hit Malaysia recently during the elections. And a candidate suffered a terrible lost due to disbelieve.

With 1 and 2 put together, I'll have to continue to blog. After all, when all is said and done, it's probably healthier to vent than to bite one's tongue.