A while ago, I read a blog post that declared “Single bloggers are better bloggers.” The gist of the post amounted to that in terms of quality content delivery, bloggers who were not in a serious relationship tended to not only be better at doing what they do, but did so on a more consistent basis.
Off the cuff, I agreed with the author. Generally, it’s assumed that single people live more exciting lives. There’s the thrill of picking up and going somewhere on a whim (without having to consult another person first), the drama that comes with spring flings and one night stands, and the pure unfiltered silliness that happens when you don’t have 24/7 access to someone help to refine your thoughts. Between those things and the idea that (more times than not) in a relationship, free time that used to be reserved for blogging tends to be used for other events, it’s hard not to buy into this idea. But before I completely signed off on it, I took a step back and thought about where this post’s author was coming from.
The author of this blog post was an early twentysomething, single female. After putting things into context, I saw that she wasn’t wrong, she wasn’t exactly right either.
At 23, your life is all about going out, doing something dumb, and then retelling the stories of the crazy hijinks that ensued. And in the game of “who has the best story,” sharing a tale of wine sampling with your better half pales in comparison to retelling the story of that time you threw up in some Croatian girl’s sink because she served you cheap wine mixed with Coca-Cola after a long night of doing shots of Jager.
I’m sure that over time, the young lady who wrote that post will look back on it and see that her judgement was clouded by her age and lack of life lessons. One day she’ll look at her blogroll and see that while she still follows bloggers who are single (either by choice or happenstance), she also happens to follow a lot of bloggers who aren’t. She may even wind up following the partners of those bloggers, just to “get the full story.” She may even wind up becoming “one of them.”
And thus is life on the Internet. Much like real life, you discredit things you don’t understand until you’re mature enough to appreciate them in full.
