The loneliness of the long-distance blogger

So, with Mr. Telford not submitting an entry to this blog yesterday, I am now the last remaining "runner" in the blogathon. With yesterday's entry, I managed a full month of daily blog posts. Now seems like a good time to take a look back at what the blogathon has been like so far.

In all honesty, most days I didn't have an idea of what to write about until time began running out and I had to produce something to stay in the race. That said, some of the entries produced from this possibly foolish method of blogging I have been quite proud of. I would certainly say that at least a third of my entries in October have been worthwhile. Some may disagree, giving a higher or lower fraction, but that of course is a personal choice; if you have no interest in whatever I blogged about on any given day, then you're unlikely to be keen to read an entry written about it. I can feel this getting somewhat unfocused, so I shall move on.

Telf stated that daily blogging "certainly became more of a chore than a creative exercise for [him] towards the end". I've certainly felt that way at a couple of points over the last month, but not to the extent that I've wanted to give up the challenge. In a way, being the last person left in the blogathon is reinvigorating and a little bit liberating: I want to continue on to see how far I can go, but I also won't feel quite so crestfallen if there is a day where I would struggle to write something and choose to end my run of daily entries.

Lastly, my reflections on the blogathon as a whole. Has it been a worthwhile exercise? I would say definitely yes. Even if for most of its duration it had only two participants, it has certainly done its job in galvanising the writers here to become a little more active than they have been in recent months. There's been a definite increase in material here from those not attempting the daily post challenge, which is brilliant to see. This place feels a lot more alive than it has done for quite some time, and I for one have found it hugely satisfying to read everything that's been written here over the last few weeks. I too hope that the activity continues here even when the blogathon has lost its final participant.

But for now, I'm going to continue looking back over the seventy-eight entries that made October 2009 the busiest month in this blog's history, and see if I can think of something worthwhile to write about here tomorrow.

Happy new month

Congratulations to Bambi on posting on halloween, and thereby going one day further than I could. I think a month is a good time to draw the first blogathon to a close - it certainly became more of a chore than a creative exercise for me towards the end. I hope, however, that it has helped to spur people into a blogging mood, and that the descent into inactivity will not be immediately repeated. I'll certainly try to keep posting on most days, not because I feel I have to, but because I want to, with the odd missed day not feeling like a failure.

Hope you all enjoyed halloween, however you spent it, and look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions throughout November...

Omphaloskepsis

Having been instructed in no uncertain terms that my situation as a man precluded me from doing a post on moon cups (and what a post it would have been), I shall have to resort to a meta-blog:

Twenty six days is an impressive stretch of blogging, and despite a couple of close calls, myself and Bambi are both still in with a chance of getting to the big first-month checkpoint. I've certainly by now hit the inevitable lack-of-creativity barrier many times, and it is getting harder and harder to find inspiration in the evenings. While I have a number of subjects I'd love to write about at length, they are not subjects that fit easily into a 30-minute gap in the evening. Hence I have to work on them for a couple of nights in a row, but with a new post needed every day, and work/evening activities being hectic, I constantly find myself at 11pm with no quick ideas, and with exhaustion setting in like a heavy coat.

I've tried to think of a gimmick - picking a random wikipedia entry and blogging about it every day, or blogging about the most-read news item on the BBC, but all too often, I feel like I would just be churning out some meaningless garbage about how car-bombs are bad and sunshine is awesome. So, if anyone reading this has any particular requests, or any particular preferences (based on my history of posts), speak now, or prepare for a whole raft of car bombs vs. sunshine type posts.

I can't do this

Dear all,

Well I mean to say, wow. Look at you all, blogging away like there's no tomorrow. How very proud of you I am. I'm aware that this challenge was open to all, and much as I would love to accept, I really can't. That's not to say I'm resigning from contributing, far from it. I would love to contribute far more than I already do and have several ideas.

What I lack, is time. I moved on to a daily paper five months ago. While I still lived an hour away from work in the car, this was problematic in itself. Last week I moved house and now seem to be working an insane amount of nights, though I do now have internet after 10 days without.

Currently, my inspiration is job-related and I can't say anything because I'm covering a murder trial and have to be careful not to write anything, anywhere, that would create a substantial risk of serious prejudice to that trial, as defined by the Contempt of Court Act. That's not to say that I would, either here or in print, but I think I'll feel more relaxed generally, if I know there's nothing written outside of work that's going to leave me with cause for concern by its mere existence.

But mostly, my problem is that because I write for a living, it's not something I'm hugely fond of doing as a leisure activity. After making words line up in a coherent, and hopefully interesting, order all day, it's not really what I like to do with my free time. And I find that while I plan blog posts in my head during the day, I get home and they've drifted out of my brain and I can never quite recapture the same elegant turns of phrase I had so carefully thought up earlier.

So I'm afraid I shall have to decline the challenge, Thanks, but no thanks. I shall certainly try and contribute more in future, but I'm wary of setting any yardstick because my job is rather unpredictable and I would almost inevitably fail to meet it. Which would make me sad and demoralised. And no one wants that.

And to anyone who may accuse me of wussing out, I will extend a middle digit in their general direction with this imperative attached: "Swivel."

I have a whole day of shorthand to transcribe. I thank you.