'Blogging.'
Is that what we still call this thing I do?
Or has the world turned sufficiently that now it’s just called 'typing something every week and sticking it up on the Internet.' Internet… is that even what we still call it? It’s all becoming a bit of a mystery.
All I know
is I’ve been doing this ‘blogging’ thing for longer than seems sensible or viable
or even useful.
I look back over
the website I post this stuff on. Posts date back to 2008 with no meaningful break
in between then and now. A quick bit of (unreliable) addition reveals that
there are now 852 posts. Average about 800 words per post and that’s, well,
quite a few words.
This isn’t
surprising. It’s in my nature to not give up on things. If I start something I
like to see it through. That becomes something of a problem when something doesn’t
present its own finish line, its own logical end. So, the likelihood is that I’ll
keep on doing this until the place I post to shuts down or until I die. I’ve
long ago reconciled myself to the fact that this rather futile exercise is for
my own benefit, much more than anybody else’s. That’s fine by me. Sometimes I
know that some kindly reader will find some use or entertainment in something I
put up here. That’s wonderful. An added bonus. Always welcome. But mostly, it’s
about me, how I’m happier in myself when I’ve set some words down and shared
them around.
A point,
Ken, is there a point to this week’s typing?
Not much of
a one. Just simply that I’m not really feeling it this past couple of weeks.
The only way I can get myself to sit and write this week’s ‘thing’ is to set
that very thought down. There is no other thought I feel ready or equipped to
deal with today.
Fear not,
Ken. (I’m going to talk to myself for a minute now. ‘First sign’ etc.) You’re
not going to stop writing these things, not in the immediate future anyway,
unless one of the aforementioned scenarios play themselves out. Stopping is not
really in your nature. So, if writing a thing this week, about how you have
nothing to write, gets you through to next week and a little more inspiration,
then so be it. Carry on to the end. Just come back fighting next week and stop
pissing around with this navel-gazing malarky.
Why am I
not feeling it, I hear you cry. Or rather I hear myself pretending to hear you
cry. It’s been one hell of a few weeks, in fairness. Things I don’t want to talk
about, at least not yet. Some of them potentially wonderful, some more of them
undoubtedly awful. None of them ready for discussion.
Perhaps it’s
as simple as that. A series of subjects are monopolising my mind and none of
them are ripe or suitable for this ‘thing,’ whatever it is.
I’ve
written posts like this before when I’ve gotten stuck. They help me got over
the roadblock. The muscle-memory of fingers on a keyboard moves my mind to
places and things I can write about. It will probably hatch something-or-other
by next week.
Meantime,
thanks for dropping by. Sorry that there’s not a good laugh or a silly idea of even
a vague memory for you to take away with you.
Maybe next
time, eh?
3 comments:
Sometimes I sits and thinks. Sometimes I just sits. Othertimes I sits with my friend Ken. Or I imagine sitting with my friend Ken. Sometimes we think to ourselves. Sometimes we think out loud. The thinking is sometimes a bit of a chore. Especially the thinking out loud. But the sitting. Ah, yes, the sitting. You can't really mess up sitting and just being.
'Tis an odd world be find ourselves in, Ken. Not sure I like it much but if this was one of the old worlds I pine after thee and me would never have met and that would've... I was going to write “made me sad” but, of course, not knowing you were out there would've had no effect on me. There must be dozens, hundreds even, of people out there I'd get on with like a house on fire that I'll never meet but that's life. But, of course, we've never technically met, not even spoken on the phone and that's been around for ages. No, we content ourselves with this virtual thingy which has its plusses but I fear the minuses might be growing. Very few blogs that I subscribed to even ten years ago survive and of those that do few post as faithfully as you; I can actually only think of two. But that's not a bad thing. Part of the problem with blogs was we all got it into our heads that our readers were clamouring for content when, the truth, was they were burdened by it. The writers were burdened and the readers were burdened. Why on earth were we doing this to each other? It wasn't helping me sell books or you, tickets.
Now I see the rise of Substack which seems to my mind nothing more than blogging rebranded. And that's fine. If a new label helps it might be the right time to get back on the horse. Not me. Although I do miss blogging. If you can't be creative then at least be productive, eh?
I kinda wish you lived down the road or even in the next town. We could meet up, chew the cud for an hour and then go our separate ways having found no need to set the world to rights. We'd talk about TV, our respective wives and kids, the rising cost of chocolate—“I paid £7.80 for three bars of chocolate in Tesco a couple of weeks back, £7.80! I remember when bars that size were 1/- (a shilling, ergo 5p)”—and we'd waste 15 minutes working out how many grammes of chocolate you can get for 5p nowadays. We should do more of that. Or talk about how great children's TV used to be and glam rock and flares and how cool Harringtons were. There's a lot thee and me have yet to talk about.
Sorry to be slow in replying to this thoughful note, Jim. I'm aware you may never even see this reply, as the medium we communicate in is not the best for high speed (or any) interaction. As you know, I tend to write this things and then blast back out into the world and not thing too much about this place until the next weekend comes around and I do it all again. For that reason, I am a poor correspondent and I sincerely apologise for that. Even if we never meet now (as seems an increasing liklihood) I always value your constancy and unwavering honest. I never get a sense of being pandered-to or bullshitted which (As you know) is an invaluable feeling to a writer. If you say something is passably good, that is worth a hundred others saying it's great. So here's to you. We may never meet and we may continue to do this funny dance for many years to come. But is has been, and contines to be, great and highly valued. K
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