I have a confession to make. I haven’t been reading your blog lately. Yes, I’m talking to you. I haven’t been reading your blog, and I feel incredibly guilty about it.

The fact of the matter is that I currently subscribe to 79 blogs. In addition, I have four of my own (with a fifth about to start), not counting the ones I write for clients. I haven’t even visited most of the new blogs on our very own Sparkplugging network, and that’s just shameful.

There’s also MySpace. And AIM. And Twitter. And LinkedIn. And Technorati. And Work It Mom! And StumbleUpon. And I really, really want a Facebook account because all of my college friends are on there. I also have four email addresses that I use on a fairly regular basis. (I have to keep coming back and adding more to this list, like LiveJounal and Yahoo Meetups and Sk*rt – which is now called kirtsy – and I haven’t even included ones I don’t use, like Digg.)

It’s just too much.

I used to love to spend time surfing around a few of my favorite blogs, leaving comments here and there. But I haven’t been able to do that for a while now. While I have been busy with work and the baby, part of it is just that I’ve been overwhelmed. I don’t know how to fit all of this social networking in with the other stuff I need to do for my business.

I suspect that I’ve actually hurt my business to some degree. I’ve been spread too thin and tried to pay attention to too many things. I’ve lost connections I’d made in the past by working to make new ones. That seems a little ridiculous now that I’ve typed it out.

So, I’m starting over. I’m going to go delete all but a handful of blogs out of my Google Reader. I’m going to pick a few and get back to interacting with those people. I’m going to let go of the guilt I have over the 900+ unread items and just wipe the slate clean.

As for the MySpace/AIM/Twitter/LinkedIn/Technorati/Work It Mom!/StumbleUpon/Facebook/email conundrum, I’m not sure what to do there. It makes sense for me to read blogs in a variety of niches, because I have blogs in a variety of niches, but this is getting a little crazy. If my job was just to network, I might have enough time in a day; but my job is actually to find and write for clients. There’s a subtle but important difference there.

I know a lot of you folks have these various accounts, and I’m curious as to how you deal with them. Any suggestions?