Back Again?

I have been delinquent. I have blogs everywhere under the sun, here, vox, LJ, myspace and b.com. Some I use, some I don't. Mostly only the pervy one gets updated with any regularity, everything else sort of languishes. I'm fighting the internal privacy battle as well as skirmishes of context in an overall war of TMI. I hid out here for a while, and then was tracked down by someone I didn't like much. (the thing I wanted to avoid in LJ) A period of dormancy probably has cleaned the slate in that regard, as well as simply time making it pretty likely she just doesn't give a shit what I do or say, which is handy.

As much trouble as LJ has given me because of the friends list, I just can't wrap my brain around how there's no good way to subscribe to a blog you like in this site except as RSS feeds. RSS feeds are a mystery to me. I hold them at arms length while viewing them with distrust and mild hostility based on a sort of determined ignorance of their nature. Somewhere in my brain, RSS feeds are like automatic bill payment. It's not like I'm not going to pay the bill, I just like some control over when and if I do it. RSS feeds sound like the scene in 7 on gluttony. I am suspicious of new fangled technology, and we hates the RSS feeds.

Myspace has a little page where you look at the blogs you subscribe to, so does b.com. Vox has some kind of convoluted system of "neighborhoods" vs categorized friends, family, etc which may be more complicated than is necessary, but it at least allows you to keep track of the people you want to read in a semi-organized fashion as *well* as allowing you to free form click on new people that catch your eye.

Blogger.com just doesn't have that. Maybe I just need stroking, I need more reader/writer interaction or something. Yet, it has everything else, and the layout is nice and it works with google and picasa and everything else that is good in the world. I don't plan to promote my blog, I don't want to get famous from writing (or am not *already* famous from writing) and I'm not looking to win any awards here, but I would like to know I have an audience and maybe even have some idea who they are. Is that too much to ask?