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I didn't mean to cease blogging for over a year.
Work continued to be pretty busy for a while after my last post, reasonably steady through June, and even July and August weren't terrible. So that was part of it.
The mental weight of backlogged posts about concerts and music stuff was another part of it. And just the general lack of interest in maintaining a regular posting schedule.
And also the half-conscious pressure to avoid more and more topics. Being sick, myself, of hearing my own repeated complaints about struggles to get more work, to look for more work, for example; less complaining, more doing, was called for, but the natural result was less talk and still no action. Another example, not talking publicly about relationships or the quest for some romance, the perceived need for discretion—and for appearing competent and confident rather than confused and confounded—outweighing my desire to be open and honest about that aspect of life.
A break maybe was a good idea. I have never claimed that my personal blogging helped me solve problems, only that it helped me deal with them mentally, but even then there was perhaps too much crutching along. On the other hand, if writing wasn't really helping me, not writing has not proved any more helpful. Maybe it was a mistake to be gone so long.
In the past couple months, a pair of bloggers whose writing I've always admired, Alison at bluishorange and Zannah at vox.machina (and multiple other sites in the past), started writing again. (While I'm at it, I also want to mention the relatively new site by another favorite blogger, Annie Tomlin, her travel/food/shopping blog Admiring Distance.) It's not clear whether Alison will sustain her comeback or go quiet again for a long while, but that's beside the point, which is that they can come back if they want to. If I want to. And so I've been thinking about that, lately, particularly as the anniversary of my last post came… and went.
Why today, why now? Simply because I had a good brief conversation with the Caffe Ladro barista (Gabe, excellent dude) about music—about how excited I was for Bumbershoot, about the great music that came out last year and is coming out this year—and just that short bout of excitedly and enthusiastically discussing music made me ask myself, why aren't I blogging, again?
If I want to be more like some of my friends I deeply admire for their creativity and activity, I need more doing, less being. And for me, one thing that means is more writing. Another thing that may mean is more writing about my enthusiasms and imaginations, less about my struggles and shortcomings. Or at least make those more amusing.
In any case, this journal is still here. Heck, I check it every day, because there are still several blogs I read through my Friends page here. (Perhaps ironically, none of my friends with LiveJournals use those anymore; a couple feeds I read on my Friends page are LiveJournals of people I'm a fan of but don't know personally, everything else is RSS feeds of non-LiveJournal blogs.) Oh, I almost forgot: Facebook and Twitter, and very recently Google+, those are also reasons why I stopped blogging here. Because of being so active there. But there are ways that LiveJournal is a better space to write than Facebook, and Twitter of course is too limited. (And Google+ kind of crosses the two in a way that's perhaps not worse than Facebook but not better than both.)
Anyhow enough rambling. I do have work to do. But as I said, I also have writing I want to do, and I have a place here for that. To do it, do it.
(I've been gone so long, this is the first I see of the "new" current LiveJournal posting page, and also that I can now connect Facebook and Twitter to have those automatically show my posts. Hmm, do I also want my Twitter posts to show up on my LiveJournal?…)
Work continued to be pretty busy for a while after my last post, reasonably steady through June, and even July and August weren't terrible. So that was part of it.
The mental weight of backlogged posts about concerts and music stuff was another part of it. And just the general lack of interest in maintaining a regular posting schedule.
And also the half-conscious pressure to avoid more and more topics. Being sick, myself, of hearing my own repeated complaints about struggles to get more work, to look for more work, for example; less complaining, more doing, was called for, but the natural result was less talk and still no action. Another example, not talking publicly about relationships or the quest for some romance, the perceived need for discretion—and for appearing competent and confident rather than confused and confounded—outweighing my desire to be open and honest about that aspect of life.
A break maybe was a good idea. I have never claimed that my personal blogging helped me solve problems, only that it helped me deal with them mentally, but even then there was perhaps too much crutching along. On the other hand, if writing wasn't really helping me, not writing has not proved any more helpful. Maybe it was a mistake to be gone so long.
In the past couple months, a pair of bloggers whose writing I've always admired, Alison at bluishorange and Zannah at vox.machina (and multiple other sites in the past), started writing again. (While I'm at it, I also want to mention the relatively new site by another favorite blogger, Annie Tomlin, her travel/food/shopping blog Admiring Distance.) It's not clear whether Alison will sustain her comeback or go quiet again for a long while, but that's beside the point, which is that they can come back if they want to. If I want to. And so I've been thinking about that, lately, particularly as the anniversary of my last post came… and went.
Why today, why now? Simply because I had a good brief conversation with the Caffe Ladro barista (Gabe, excellent dude) about music—about how excited I was for Bumbershoot, about the great music that came out last year and is coming out this year—and just that short bout of excitedly and enthusiastically discussing music made me ask myself, why aren't I blogging, again?
If I want to be more like some of my friends I deeply admire for their creativity and activity, I need more doing, less being. And for me, one thing that means is more writing. Another thing that may mean is more writing about my enthusiasms and imaginations, less about my struggles and shortcomings. Or at least make those more amusing.
In any case, this journal is still here. Heck, I check it every day, because there are still several blogs I read through my Friends page here. (Perhaps ironically, none of my friends with LiveJournals use those anymore; a couple feeds I read on my Friends page are LiveJournals of people I'm a fan of but don't know personally, everything else is RSS feeds of non-LiveJournal blogs.) Oh, I almost forgot: Facebook and Twitter, and very recently Google+, those are also reasons why I stopped blogging here. Because of being so active there. But there are ways that LiveJournal is a better space to write than Facebook, and Twitter of course is too limited. (And Google+ kind of crosses the two in a way that's perhaps not worse than Facebook but not better than both.)
Anyhow enough rambling. I do have work to do. But as I said, I also have writing I want to do, and I have a place here for that. To do it, do it.
(I've been gone so long, this is the first I see of the "new" current LiveJournal posting page, and also that I can now connect Facebook and Twitter to have those automatically show my posts. Hmm, do I also want my Twitter posts to show up on my LiveJournal?…)
