The Blogger comments problem is sapping my strength.

I used to blog without comments. I used to like it like that:

What has been your worst blogging experience?

My brief experience with the comments function, which a couple of nasty people ruined for everybody.

Ha! How much thinner my skin was in 2004!

Since late last night, Blogger has had a problem displaying comments, and I'm being forced back into the old experience of blogging without comments. (I do see them in the email, but it's not the same when they aren't here and when the readers aren't talking to each other.)

I used to prefer writing without comments, but over the years, I've gotten so accustomed to the familiar environment of comments that writing without the prospect of comments feels like speaking out loud when there's no one else in the room. I can do it, but it doesn't feel that different from thinking.

I know you're still there. I need to overcome this absurd block. I seem to need displayed comments, but think of the people who spend years writing books with little assurance that they will be read at all. You have to find a different attitude toward writing. I was going to say that the book-writer writes more for himself, for the intrinsic reward of writing, but in fact, the book-writer needs to obsess more about who will read this. The blogger can see that people are reading and really is more free to write for the intrinsic reward. I'm so into that immediate reward that I'm greedy for more of it — in the form of displayed comments.

But the display will go up, eventually, and you will see what you and others have been writing, in this unusual context of not seeing what others are saying. In the meantime, you can display opinion now, thusly:

With this temporary failure to display comments...
	I'm enjoying the refreshingly uncluttered look of things here.
	I feel frustrated that others cannot see what I think.
	I'm wondering what the usual commenters have to say.
	Althouse feels less provocative because I can't see the provokees.
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