In today's post, Lloyd provocatively asserts:

At great risk of coming across as a jerk in this matter, I gotta say: it baffles me to this day why no one else around here does what I see as such a simple, hyperlinking, act. Looking at the names on the links on the left [excluding the 'external' folks list], I see no one else who makes a routine practice of listlogging or annotated hyperlinking.

And I am left to wonder why that is... we have proven this weblogging sphere to be an incredibly deep and powerful medium for storytelling--shared or individually--that it astonishes me why we mostly choose not to share what we think about the lives of others who have taken the time to share themselves in their weblogs.

But I need to get down off this particular high horse, and acknowledge a simple fact. Perhaps the reason is this: it takes time to listen. And in addition, to really listen, with an ear to reflecting one's own thinking, takes work. And in the end, this kind of 'work' takes a very low priority in the larger scheme of your life.

I can live with that; but it disappoints, nevertheless. It seems so easy, but it evidently turns out to be quite hard.

It seems, Lloyd, that you more or less answered your own question. I want to affirm what many of us have taken for granted -- your facility, effort, and gift for connecting others to each other and drawing people out in the blogosphere. Speaking for myself (and probably for others), I'm in awe of the way you mentor as many folks (young and older) in "real life/face-to-face" and also in various virtual spaces -- partly because I have a sense of how much work it is to do and how faithfully you do this work. On a number of occasion, you have personally made a special welcome to me into your blogging community [1, 2] -- and I have also expressed my gratitude, which can definitely be in more evidence.

Having said this, I must admit a slight annoyance at Lloyd's "high horse" on this topic. What Lloyd has done is a wonderful service and is a lot of work. I would like to think that what I'm doing is not only hard work, but also of service to the community. I've had on my overflowing to-do list the task of improving my own blogroll, with the goal of better engaging with the many blogs and websites I do try to keep up with. One idea I told Chris about (but which I haven't been able to apply yet) is to have ways of indicating multiple levels of engagement. There are a lot of things I read that fall in the category of I-hear-you-sister-or-brother-but-don't-have-anything-to-say-right-now. I've struggled to find ways to "nod my head" or say "hmmm, yes" on a blog without having to write out too much (and spend too much effort doing so).

So improving my blogroll facility and my blog-reading technology are on my list of things to do to help me better engage in this community. But at the end of the day, as you said to me at lunch yesterday, our attention is limited and small. I wish I could do more, really -- and I feel terrible all the time for not doing more (yes, that's my problem). But I can't and I need to stop feeling bad about not being to do so.

(Let me add something that may or may address the issue at hand. Even though I've been blogging for over three years now, I feel that I'm still getting the hang of this new medium. There are periods in which my blog was really nothing more than links to a bunch of things I happen to be reading at that time. At other times, I'm trying to do close readings of other readings and responding to those readings. Recently, I've been focused a lot on what's going on in my own head and heart and life -- with less linking out in this medium. It doesn't mean that I've stopped listening to others. I do a lot of listening in "my real life". And it doesn't mean that I don't plan to do a lot of listening to others. At this moment in time, I'm choosing to listen to myself -- and share what I hear. That may sound grossly self-centered -- and maybe it is. So be it. But at the same time, I'm trying to find a way to put out there as much as I know about a lot of things so that others can take advantage of it. A lot of times, that's less about listening to a lot of individuals. (For example, there's an entire edublogging community of which I am nominally a part -- and I hope to do a lot of listening to others soon. But I'm not doing a lot of that right now....)

Does that do justice to your post, Lloyd? I'm trying to listen here....