“SO, WHAT HAPPENED TO JULY, THEN?”

Dips toe once more in treacherous waters of the Straits of Blogfordshire… Wonders whether those dark waters are too cold, too hot, or just far too shark infested… Thinks for a while and then decides to dive in head first anyway…

Some of you (although, I imagine, not all that many) might have noticed a general absence of my presence here in Lesser Blogfordshire over these past few weeks, but, after much serious thought, some of which I tried to explain in yesterday’s offering, I do seem to have returned on (at the very least) a semi-regular basis so, for better or worse, we do rather seem to be stuck with each other, even if we’re not quite as shackled as the characters in an Alfred Hitchcock interpretation of a “Richard Hannay” story…

I suppose, in the end, what I really wanted was a month off from all of this blogging mularkey, although, as I have already explained, being a bit obsessive compulsive about it, I didn’t actually get one, but I did wonder what kind of a difference it might actually make (To the world? To the stats? To my state of mental well-being? To my sleep levels?) if I chose not to publish anything for a month and there really was only one way to find out.

Incidentally, in terms of what I did find out, I’d like to be able to report that it was “not much”, but I’d be lying to you…

However it was interesting that writing nothing didn’t seem to effect the amount of people visiting and having a quick read, which was interesting I suppose. Meanwhile, if you look at the numbers for July, you could even suggest that “not writing” was “more popular” than actually writing, at least for a little while, which is an interesting thing to find out, I suppose, if that sort of thing floats your boat as much as it actually floats mine… I did wonder whether letting the axe fall in quite the way I did was completely honest, but I think, at the time, it genuinely was.

After all, I needed to know whether I even wanted to carry on with this pastime any longer and also, if my habits with regards to other habitual writings which I have done in the past were anything to go by, I really was just as likely to never return to it as to continue.

Oh hell… Two days back and I’m doing it again… Blogging about blogging. “Blog will eat itself…” and there I was thinking that I was all better now…

You see, despite what anyone might think, I really do struggle with doing this.

“So why do it at all then?” you might well ask…

Well, the problem is that I do actually quite enjoy the process of writing, but the tricky little issue of letting people read it has always caused me problems. Even last month, when I was trying to fly the coop, there was a “falling out” over my decision, one which I have debated with myself at length over these past few weeks the results of which I really am not prepared to share.

I must admit that I did find the fact that post number 650 exactly coincided with the end of a calendar month very appealing and slotted nicely into that genuine sense that enough was enough, but, as it turns out, it really wasn’t enough after all.

As Joni once wrote (and no doubt then said – or rather sang - thousands of times afterwards) “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone…” and so, perhaps sometimes you do have to allow things to properly die before they can be reborn…

Still, back in the early days, the general anonymity was fine, and the lack of “expectation” to continue that I put upon myself meant that doing this was just a bit of inconsequential fun that I could choose to do or not do at any time that I wanted.

Then, one day, I got up and started taking things far too seriously. One day I woke up and decided that I actually cared about what it was I wrote. One day, I woke up and decided that I was going to try and do this every single day for as long as I possibly could.

“Idiot…”

“It’s not your job for God’s sake…”

“So stop treating it like it is one.”

Believe me, I’ve said all of these things to myself countless times but still I would get up and rattle out my nonsense and the days, weeks and months would pass.

Then another cuckoo flew into the nest. I started to worry about quality. I suddenly felt that these little outpourings somehow needed to be consistently entertaining and aimed for them to be so, and even though I felt that there was the occasional “dud”, more often than not I was okay with them. Otherwise they lurked unpublished in the “list” waiting for the day to dawn when I either couldn’t be bothered, or my standards had slipped far enough for me to let them through.

For example, on some days I might think that the latest posting is just far too dull to be of interest to anyone, so I might not even bother promoting it by posting the links to other sites. Instead I would just let it sit there as a monument to my own shortcomings, laughing at my stupid conviction that I was ever able to consider myself to be anything approaching some kind of an actual writer…

After all, I may be a nobody, but I’m nobody else’s nobody…

I do, however, remain amazed at just how easy it is to lose the sparkle, even when I’m not entirely sure why… Sometimes it just goes away and you’re left with a drab, dull and uninspired thought that goes round and around in circles and doesn’t take you anywhere… but I suppose that’s just “writing” for you…

There is, of course, the tricky little matter of what has been dubbed my “media disease” which hasn’t really gone away, to be perfectly honest. It is, perhaps, more under control than once it was, but, like any addiction, you need to be constantly on your guard in case it comes back. But hey, I’ll reply to anyone who’s polite enough to take the time to write something to me in a civilised tone, especially if I understand what the hell that they’re going on about, and, when all is said and done, I don’t suppose that there was any real harm in spending a few weeks being reactive rather than pro-active was there…?

So, getting back to our main question, “What DID happen to July, then…?

Well, I spent a lot of time in a kind of self-imposed “blogging rehab”; I wrote an awful lot of rubbish that I don’t want anyone else to ever read ever in order to work my way through my troubles; real work, proper work got itself back on an even keel, and I had a short holiday…

All very dull and none of which you’d have wanted to read about anyway. A pretty fair result all round, I’d say…