WOE (OR WHOA!) VEMBER

November always finds me getting more and more disillusioned with my wordsmithery. I guess it’s just the time of year when writing just tends to seems either uninspired, or just too much like hard work, or I feel that I have far too much else to do to give it my fullest attention.

Then, after the “fun” and “frolics” of my average Chrimbletide are out of the way, and another year gets filed away in the growing pile of years wasted, and I reach across to grab the next one from that tiny pile remaining, January comes along (with any luck) and finds me feeling too bored and too downhearted, and so writing is precisely the distraction I need, even though I spent most of the previous November convinced that this rampant bloggery simply cannot continue for much longer and drawing a line under it at the end of the year seems like a pretty good idea.

Here I am actually chugging along through that very November and still having those very thoughts rattling round in my mind, and that bright new January still remains far enough in the future to seem almost impossibly distant. Instead, the mental shutters are crashing down and, once the huge burden of December has been dealt with, the notion of January as a shining beacon of freedom remains a hopeful thing to look forward to and cling onto as something to have awaiting me.

Then there are the other projects which still need to be considered and allocated the actual time in which to do them. It’s no coincidence that the blog tag started in January this year, when my mind was full of hope and possibilities, but once the project was “completed” there was a plan to extend it and continue work on it, albeit in another medium.

Sadly, the November misery (“Woe-vember”) has instead put the blues into my mind and, no matter how often I try and open up that document, it fails to talk to me and it remains untouched, and is slowly withering and dying in my mind, perhaps because my mind thinks of it as something that was only a bit of fun and is now over and done with, rather than an exciting possibility to extend my literary muscles…

There’s also another little “stuff to do” item that’s popped up, which takes us right back to the very dawn of this blog and, in many ways, might provide the final excuse for bringing things full circle and giving the whole thing the kind of neat “closure” that perhaps it needs.

Slightly before I posted Blog Posting Number#1, I had contributed to an evening of “new writing” for the theatre group to which I used to belong many moons ago. After a brief flurry of enthusiasm and motivation, and the truly exciting process of rehearsing my writing with a group of actors, the event happened and then the burgeoning Writers’ Group slammed into a brick wall of indifference and, disappointingly for me at least, nothing more came of it.

Excepting, of course, that the whole notion of me writing a blog grew out of it which leads us to where we are today.

Anyway, they’re having another one, and an email popped into my inbox asking whether I might wish to contribute to it. I did immediately have a couple of ideas for things to write, but I’ve not actually found the inspiration, or the sheer will-power, to actually get on with the grind of actually producing them.

This is, of course, my usual flaw. If I don’t ride that crest of initial enthusiasm, the chances of them getting produced at all very quickly tends towards zero, unless somebody comes along and puts in the time, effort and energy to “encourage” me enough to think that I don’t want to be “letting somebody down…”

But if I am going to get any of that done, then maybe something will have to give, and that something might have to be this, especially as I’ve already convinced myself that it will be stopping soon anyway.

I read a short article online recently asking what my “long-term blogging strategy” might be which came as a bit of an eye-opener, I can tell you, because, as far as I’m aware at least, I’ve never really had one.

Well, apart from turning up each morning for a month (which became a year, which then turned into two), and churning out something, anything, to ensure that there wasn’t a gap and those yearly figures could hit the magic 365 or 366 depending upon the length of the year in question.

I don’t think that this article was really directed at me, to be perfectly honest with you. There was a lot of talk about how “your blog is your business” which I imagine didn’t mean in the sense that nobody else could dictate my content, but was referring to some kind of money-grubbing capitalist strategem which has little to do with how things are intended here in our dark and lonely corner of the imagination.

Here, the sole purpose of the blog is for me to have a bit of “fun” (in whatever way I choose to define that) with the process of writing words regularly, and really nothing else, so it does come as something of a surprise that people might even consider that I might be doing this for monetary gain, although it does perhaps explain why it is considered such “bad form” to keep on “pushing” your blog postings upon your “followers” in TwitWorld…

So if you are feeling a tad cynical this morning and wondering “Ah well, he would say that, wouldn’t he…?” I really ought to point out categorically and emphatically that I’ve never made one penny out of all my humble efforts to entertain you and, in all honesty, don’t ever expect to.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, I should, however perhaps turn my thoughts to my own “long term strategy” before getting up at the crack of dawn to rattle out “something” each and every morning finally kills me.

Actually, having any kind of “long-term” strategy for something I’m constantly and consistently considering giving up would be rather pointless, don’t you think…?

And so we finish today with that familiar “Same old, same old” of me considering “giving it all up” again, even though you know I won’t.

Roll on January…