blogging about blogging

Through a combination of some internet coincidences and a very slow weekend at work, I ended up looking at a lot of blogs today. These are all intelligent, thoughtful, complex, text-heavy blogs, each linking to dozens of other worthwhile sites. They cover art, literature, film, world events, politics – you name it. Some are very focused on a specific topic, others more broad; all offer intelligent, critical discourse on all sorts of fascinating subjects.



I have one question: How do they do it?



How does anyone have the time? Not the time to write a blog, that alone is manageable. But these blogs don't exist in a vacuum. Each of the writers is presumably reading many of the blogs they link to, and combing the net in search of other interesting sites and tidbits.



I do not understand how any of these people have time to do anything besides read and post all day long. Do they have lives outside of the net? Do they go outside? Do they have jobs, children, friends, dogs, shopping, laundry? Do they have down-time? Do they sleep? I'm not saying this in a sarcastic or disdainful way, not at all. I am simply mystified.



I don't know that many people, but no one who I know well - well enough to know the general shape and tenor of her/his life - has time to do this either. Everyone I know is working, or raising their children, or going to the opera, or watching movies, reading books, going to meetings... They are not blogging and they aren't keeping up with huge numbers of blogs or websites.



As is, most of us feel we never have enough time for all the things we want to do. For my part, I would like to read more, although I'm aware that my lifestyle affords me more reading time than many people's. I would like to listen to more music. Some people I know wish they had more time to exercise or play sports, or cook, or play piano. Everyone I know would like more time for something.



How, how, how do so many people have so much time to read websites and write their own?? Given we all have the same number of hours in a day, what aren't these bloggers doing? Or what's their secret?