Is August a bad month for blogging? Even James Lileks felt compelled to apologise today (“nothing I’ve written here in the last gasp of August has satisfied me…”) and I certainly did, sort of, a few posts back. Andrew Sullivan may have been on to something when he shuttered up completely for the month. Could it be that blogs are inherently derivative, in the sense that they feed on news, and on a slow news month they simply lose their verve?

Or perhaps there are more people on vacation in August, so there are simply fewer participants thrumming on the great sounding board that is blogging. This makes more sense, as August has hardly turned out to be slow in the news department.

Still, blogaholics find ready enablers in the millions of internet dens that now dot holiday destinations. I certainly was able to get my fix in western Ireland, and Ben Hammersley is getting his in Kabul. But over the past few days, as I read his blog, I have noticed an aspect of his writing that I recognized in my own over the past month or so: it’s the tone of the travelog, of the visitor, of the person skimming the surface of a place, and by necessity this is not as enlightening as the writings of an expat (site currently down) living in the place, or that of a well-travelled native. I think this is because the best writing about places is about the author’s connections to those places. It takes time to make those connections — at the very least, it takes longer than a holiday.

So perhaps summer blogging is a little like the summer fling: fun while it lasts, but of no lasting importance.