No, not exactly. But if you’re one of the (few) regular readers of Longer Thoughts, by now you’ve noticed that there hasn’t been a new post in a while. Yes, it’s mostly attributable to the fact that I’ve been on the road a lot, but not entirely.
When I first gave myself the assignment of writing and posting at least 250 words a day, I had several goals in mind (not necessarily in the this order):
- To see if I could do it
- To discover my writing strengths
- To develop an engaging style
- To enjoy it
At this point I feel that I’ve made a lot of headway on the first three, and mostly succeeded in the fourth. But I’ve also realized that I don’t have the time and energy to maintain a daily pace at a high enough quality level without detracting from the things I do that actually put bread on the table (most notably, writing and recording music). On any given week I probably spent 3 hours putting links into posts for every 15 minutes I spent with my guitar. Untenable!
Does this mean I’m giving up? Never! I’m far too stubborn to stop. But I’ll only post when something truly moves me to write, or when I have a completed short story or longer critical/analytical piece to present. I simply don’t have any interest in being a general blogger, or in becoming the curator of a specialty area.
Oh, and I’ll still give bad advice now and then. That takes no brainpower whatsoever.
“S”
4 Comments
I certainly understand how hard it can be to produce quality stuff on a daily basis. Forcing something out is easy; consistently creating something you can be proud of isn’t. Still, I hope you spare a couple minutes once in a while to seriously toss around potential post ideas in your head. If nothing jumps out, nothing jumps out, but at least it gets the mind going. Some pretty interesting stuff can emerge when you aren’t expecting to have a topic.
First, I’m really glad that you’re not giving up on this space entirely.
Second, I’m really glad that you’re not going to keep forcing yourself to do something that you don’t feel inspired to do and that seems to be stressing you out.
Third: I’d much rather read something that you *wanted* to write because then it feels so much specialer (it’s a word if I say it is).
Mostly: Do whatever you need to do to make yourself happy and the rest of us will meet you there 🙂
Finally: You’ve got a permanent spot in my RSS Reader so you can be sure that whenever you do post, no matter how sporadic it may be, that there will be someone reading and appreciating that thing that you’ve created from inside your brain. 🙂
While I’m sad that the quantity of posts you make will go down (because I’m always looking for new things to read,) I’m happy to accept that knowing that when you do feel the urge to post, you’ll be doing it because you want to and not out of some feeling of obligation to us. Look on your Longer Thoughts posts as a sort of gift to us fans if you will. Nothing is worse than a gift given to you out of obligation (“here’s some socks and underwear, uh, happy birthday!”) rather than one given because the giver thought it was something cool that you’d really enjoy. So, when something jumps into your head that you really think we’d like to hear about, go for it.
All I ask is that when you do post something, you make a brief mention of it on Twitter, since I’m not a fan of RSS feeds and end up not finding new posts until days later otherwise.
You can only do so much, and you definitely have a lot on your plate. I don’t comment often, but I do appreciate your humour. (Which reminds me: my brain *keeps* mulling over how to make Om Nom Mom’s a viable, food-safe business idea.)
There’s a website out there that gives users “rewards” for writing a specific number of words per day, but if you miss a day, you go back to zero. As rewarding and educational as it was to force myself to write that much every day, I found myself burning out, and sure enough I did miss a day. It was disheartening. Even James Scott Bell has said (at a writer’s conference workshop I attended) that we do need breaks of a day or two each week.
So I look forward to reading your posts when you can post them, because they’re entertaining, but don’t push yourself. They have to be entertaining or worthwhile for you, too. 🙂 Else why write them?
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