About a month ago I wrote a quick email to the people behind NaBloPoMo asking what their plans were for this year. I offered assistance, and to tell the truth, was actually rather relieved when it transpired that Ning would be hosting the community side of things this year. It meant I could concentrate on taking part.
Being a software and web developer has it’s drawbacks. If you are of the appropriate mindset, you don’t wander the internet thinking “this looks good, I’ll take part”, instead you think “this would be easy to build - I know, I’ll build it”. You end up building and running things just to see how. I speak from experience - I’ve done it.
In recent times I have experienced a somewhat unexpected shift from wanting to build things to wanting to take part. Perhaps it’s the natural and eventually inevitable response to long working hours on complex commercial development projects. Perhaps the magic and wonder of building things has been bludgeoned out of me.
I digress.
I arrived at NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) and started reading the new member’s blogs - requesting “friends” and adding feeds to Google Reader as I went. Over the last twelve months I had stagnated within a small and comfortable group of people. We read each other’s blogs and commented as you might meet up old friends in the armchairs at the corner of your favourite pub.
Walking back into NaBloPoMo exposed me to the fire-hose of blog posts being poured from the internet’s faucets. An entire weekend was spent enthralled with interesting people, wonderful writing, and new found favorites.
And then life returned.
Up at 6am. On the train at 7am. In London at 9am. Work, work, work. On the train at 5pm. Home at 7pm. Eat. Collapse. Send time with better half, and then finally check Google Reader. Fall off chair - over 50 blog posts to read from new friends. A creeping realisation dawns that I might just have bit off more than I can chew.
I will attempt to keep abreast of people’s writing through November, but am getting the apologies ready now. If I was a woman and could do more than one thing at once I might have some hope of keeping up, but I fear I am already doomed.