While talking to a good friend last night on the internet, I realised how little I have been sharing recently via my blog, and how few blogs I have read (the list of unread blog posts is starting to resemble something very large and menacing that could hurt if it fell on you). I’m wondering if it is just a case of life getting in the way, or if blogging suffers peaks and troughs like any other activity I take part in.
I used to think it was some great mystery - my cyclical fascination with “hobbies” and other various distraction (I use the term hobby carefully - I don’t really regard the web or blogging as a hobby - it’s more an extension of my life). As I grew older I realised that everybody goes through phases. Different people call them different things - moods, biorhythms, and so on. Mine seem to be reading, movies, chess, music, drawing, mathematics, and running. If you were to plot them out alongside in a timeline, there is probably some kind of pattern to their recurrence over the years - with some becoming more often, and others withering.
I’m guessing that blogging (as an activity) is not falling into shadow for me at the moment, but rather life has obscured it. At present I am getting up at 6am every morning, and not walking back into the house until 7pm. By the time we have eaten dinner it is invariably 9pm or later and the evening is already gone.
The one upside to commuting into London is that I find myself sat on trains for about 4 hours of each day. You might imagine this would lead to me writing the novel I have often thought about, but invariably I find myself squashed into a corner of the train carriage, or squashed into the corner of an underground train. Hardly conducive to writing (or having room to unfold the MacBook or even the Moleskine notebook).
Perhaps my blogging report card for the last week should read something along the lines of “Jonathan has been somewhat distracted of late, and this has shown in both the scope and frequency of his writing. Must try harder.”
Looking over my shoulder, the list of blogs I have to read is reaching the 200 mark. If you know I have read your blog in the past and you suddenly discover comments appearing on old posts, you know that I am tackling the north face of the Eiger - also known as my blogroll.