Posts from — January 2008

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Oh Baby Give Me One More Chance
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How To Cream Off Legitimate Google Searches By Peppering Your Posts With Song Lyrics

Right, OK, well the last two weeks have been a test to see how you respond to burnt-out bloggers deprived of daylight and I’m pleased to say the majority of you passed. Well done. Excellent job everyone.

Seriously, thanks for the patience. Regular readers here (chorus of “guilty”s) were understanding and don’t worry – all the pressure was coming from me. I can thank you gliblessly because you’re back reading here now, aren’t you, so understanding is what it was. Also, it wouldn’t sit right with either me or you if I didn’t explain the lessons learned during and changes brought about by my blogdown.

I learned that this is not just this, but you as much as me and that it’s nice to know we’re connected by more than wires.

I feel much better now. It felt bad not to write, but it’s good that it did. I honestly thought I might be gone a month or two, but found not writing every day just what I needed. But writing generally is what I also need, so I wrote every couple of days to because that is what I do (see “a thought for my rolling before”). And after a week and a bit, I found just writing every day or so to be what I would call relaxing. Any more and I would have gone back to the pressure, any less and I’d start to get itchy pencils. Not a pretty thought.

As soon as I realised it was going to be a break rather than a case of “goodbye cruel web”, I came back to post, which is the one you may have read after the video.

I also learned something else I already knew, which is that I’m fairly productive. I like results, I like the focus it gives me and how it keeps away the guilt of lethargy and depression. It’s playing fetch with the black dog.

Example: on Saturday, 5 January when I would normally have been publishing the weekend song – which would have been Canary by Liz Phair (I learn my name/ I write with a Number 2 pencil/ I work up to my potenial, I earn my name/ I come when called) – I woke up thinking: “Hmm… today’s the day I’m going to finish my book and make bagels.”

And I did and I did. Results, see?

And not like the obsessive stuff or alpha-type nutsoid drive, just – doing a thing and feeling all right about it. And it’s the same with writing this here. How many people in the world get to write whatever they want and feel good about it and get the same reaction from other people? Not many, not comparatively. It’s a humbling thing more than anything.

So no, it’s not a duty, it’s a privilege and feel I do get paid to do this, and the money is pretty good.*

There’s a lot coming up. You’ve got animal facts, some politics (but interesting! With animal facts!), a meme about all the reading/listening/surfing I’ve been doing, a couple of video posts in the pipeline, even a cooking spot.

Also, Ed offered to send me legal pads, pencils and an electric sharpener at the weekend. Thanks for the offer, mate, but I’m doing OK.

*I’m speaking metaphorically here, but if anyone wants to actually pay me to write then let’s talk. I can churn out 300-500 words a day no sweat, and with the right offer, I’d ditch this place in a second.

There’s probably no better way to lull yourself back into anything than to the sad, subtle triumph of South African harmonies.

I’ll write more later, but for now? Hello. I know. Sorry. Better. Thanks.

So here’s Ezra Ngcukana, with a song which makes me feel proud and I don’t even know what at – maybe just the sheer uncompromising wonder of everyday life.

Look at me. All lulling.

How’ve you been, OK?

Listen: You Think You Know Me

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Related pages
Weekend Song archive

All right, who had nine days?

Ah yes – the deal. It’s not that I’ve been finding it hard to write lately. I write easily, I think of the random crap that seems to lend itself very kindly to blogging. I’m not showing off when I say this because it’s equally uncool that I find it hard not to write. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I need to take a break, because if I don’t decide to stop, I will keep writing every day and my thoughts and hours will be spent on here, which is time not spent generally living.

Over the last year, every trip into town on the bus was spent typing out that morning’s thoughts and a certain portion of the evening was dedicated to checking the reaction to those thoughts. That’s time when I could have been entertaining myself with a book, or a new album or watching a film or playing guitar or even doing something useful.

I know I’ll keep writing. I always have. I’m a creative person. I’m not totally comfortable with the performance aspect of it, but that changed gradually over the last ten years when I no longer saw the point of not sharing the stuff I was producing anyway. One time when I was fourteen, I spent the first five hours of a transatlantic flight hunched over a pad of paper when a flight attendant eventually said, “Wow, you’ve spent this whole time writing.” I smiled shyly and slid the many sheets of paper into my hand luggage and watched the movie. No one would have read it anyway in those days, which was a shame, but then so was even being noticed writing.

Which is bullshit, I know that now. There’s nothing wrong with sharing what you do if people enjoy it. Garrison Keillor encourages performance and urges people not worry about what anyone else thinks. He said: “Get over yourself. Yes, you’re unique, but so is everyone else.”

I can also say that at my best, on a good day and with a tailwind, I can write worth measuring up to some of the stuff I would enjoy reading myself, and I’m not that much different from a lot of people who may think the same.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been asking myself if I should keep updating the blog at all. While I can’t come up with an answer to that, I think that asking the question is reason enough to rest in itself. I’m not sure if there has to be a point of not sharing, or of blogging or not blogging, but again – if I have to ponder the point, then it’s probably time to stop. For a bit.

Lately I made a few audio posts, then video stuff, which I have enjoyed a lot. Last week I even put up a podcast feed on itunes, so the kids could subscribe and download updates on their pods of i. It even looked pretty cool, my stuff up there alongside Clive James and NPR’s Driveway Moments. But I stopped short of producing anything since because I thought it would just develop into another thing that I push myself too hard to do.

Last year I published 120,000 words, which is something, but that’s in the shadow of last November and December when I nearly deleted this whole site on three occasions because I had become overstretched and resentful – and nobody likes a Mister Grumpyblogs.

Charles Shultz wrote Peanuts every day for fifty years and that’s an awesome achievement. He could walk over the street, have breakfast and read the papers, open his mail and doodle all morning and produce something by lunch. Or maybe that’s how he managed to do it.

I even toyed with the idea of creating a different blog, just for a laugh while I took a break. It was a good idea that a friend came up with, I even wrote a post before Christmas. I would have pointed to it from here. I wasn’t going to keep it up, it would have just been for a joke. But the point is not that “I hate my blog”, just that I need a break.

You never know. I may find that I have to post a lot if indeed that’s how I roll. If that’s the case, then I’ll see you back here in a bit. But first I have to find out how it is I do roll, because over the last year I set out to post every day and that’s what I did without so much as a thought for my rolling. OK, twice I think I missed a post in November when I was getting cranky, but then I posted four or five posts over the following two days. Admittedly some of them were just plain odd.

This is a break. Thanks for the messages. It might be two weeks, it might be two months. I doubt it will be any longer, but it might be and I’ll let you know. Sonny Rollins did the thing with the Williamsburg Bridge and maybe I’ll do the same. If so, I promise you that when the posts do return, this site will be better than before. Honestly, you’ll love it. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll lose fifteen pounds, you’ll fight to get a ticket, but before that happens I need to miss writing again and that can only occur by not doing it.

Thank you from all of me at This Is This and have a happy New Year.