Five One Four Nine
In news that surprises absolutely nobody, I’ve gone another year where I’ve barely blogged.
I realised earlier this year that it’s not for lack of things to talk about – christ, this year has had some moments – but rather this feeling that every post must be polished, have an accompanying featured image, have the right balance of insight and wit, etc.
Absolute nonsense rules that I made for myself that make no sense as a blogger who doesn’t have ads, sponsors, etc.
It’s not the first time I’ve had this realisation & tbh I’m sure I’ve talked about it before, but it was looking back through some super old posts the other day that made me realise how much that unnecessary rule setting changed me as a blogger. Not that I’m saying my old material was stellar – it definitely wasn’t – but it recorded memories and moments and things that I refer back to in a way that I genuinely miss. I feel like some of my longest, most polished posts say absolutely nothing despite being 1000 words long.
This year has given me moments that I should have poured my heart out over, events that writing about would have been ‘therapy’, but instead I went “head down, plod on”. Didn’t want to bore people, didn’t want to invade others’ privacy, didn’t want to ruffle feathers. When did I become that person?
There’s not really a point to this post. I will likely hit publish and then not write again for 6 months. But maybe, just maybe, there’s a smidgen of a chance that one pointless ramble of a brain dump will inspire another and I’ll go back to blogging – to actually journaling – in a way that works for me.
We’ll see.
adastra said:
On 24 Nov at 6:24 pm
I can totally relate to that feeling of adhering to some kind of self-imposed standard when it comes to blog posts. Sometimes I write a lot more than necessary, just because it doesn’t feel “done” otherwise. It’s quite silly, because I started blogging more to replace whatever I used to write on Twitter/Mastodon/Bluesky, etc, where I definitely never put that much effort into my posts.
Mark Howells-Mead said:
On 26 Nov at 12:41 pm
Funny, in a way, just how many bloggers like us — who do web stuff for clients — get all caught up in presenting professional and reasoned posts. When I get all wrapped up in this way, I just grab a photo at random from the archive and force myself to write a single, short, paragraph about it. Maybe just writing something short will get the muscle memory going again.
Rhys said:
On 09 Dec at 3:12 pm
I wish you were in the room when Ana Rodrigues gave the talk about blogging/publishing at Loopconf. Somebody asked her “How do you hit publish and write?”. She pretty much said “get rid of all rules, nobody probably cares too much”.
It’s been a mantra I’ve followed with my blog this year – which has helped me scribble more. Embrace the three sentence blog post :)