The Blog's Influence on Writing

I am currently struggling with the third occurrence of a pattern that unfolds every time I start writing on the interweb again (outside of work, which is a different beast): starting out doing it just for me, just to have an outlet for the things that won't get published elsewhere. I do it anonymously. I don't show it to anyone.

Pretty soon, I decide that what I'm writing is good, and I'm a fool to not share it. (Don't you do that, trick yourself for a time into thinking that your approval of your own self is enough?) I dip my toe in. A Facebook share here; this time around, a Twitter post there. I even started a doppelganger tumblr, just to see what all the fuss is about. (Guys, I DO NOT GET TUMBLR.)

I start reading other blogs, to see what works and what doesn't, to cultivate ideas for my own writing, to get inspiration. But the opposite happens. The conclusion I come to, inevitably, invariably, tragically-for-me, is that the stuff that makes the internet putty in the hands of writers is the brassiest stuff; often good writing but always with a clever maneuver right out of the gate, because of how no one reads past the first couple of lines online unless there is a seriously entertaining hook, the more irreverent the better, yaddayaddayou'vehearditbefore.

In other words, a style other than the one I prefer. And then I get frustrated. Because none of this was what I meant for myself, but now I am feeling the pull of it. And I decide maybe I should quit the internet (again) and return my focus to writing the long-winded, fully formed thoughts that no one cares about anymore, maybe even including me.

Which more or less brings us up to my present state of mind, where I mope about convinced that I was born in the wrong era, the correct era having been the the era of the attention span. Which was, what, 1950-something? Or was it never, and I just remember a history I didn't live in the image that is most appealing to me?

I'm interested in hearing the thoughts of others on this. Did blogging change how you write? For better or worse? And how to you cope with the influence the blog exerts?