Blaugust 2023 is Coming

We’re very nearly there. To that time of the year where bloggers new and old are given a jolly good kick in the rear and asked to get a move on.

Or else.

If you’re now asking, ‘Or else what?’ that’s really the wrong attitude to be taking, I feel. You should just ask no further questions and get involved.

Go on. *makes vaguely shoo-like gestures*

… Alright, I’m perhaps sensing that this might not be the most effective path to victory and that some of you do, in fact, still harbour questions. Things like, ‘What are you smoking?’ and, ‘Can I have some?’. I don’t want to answer those ones though. Oh, there we go.

What is Blaugust?

Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place in August each year that focused on blogging and other serialized content. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. For years blogging has been dwindling, and in part, Blaugust was my attempt and reversing that course by compiling a bunch of veteran bloggers in one place and making it super easy to ask questions and get answers. The idea is that this festival of blogging can help reignite dwindling fires for the next year and give folks a sense of kinship as a result.

Belghast (2023), Blaugust 2023 is Coming (Tales of the Aggronaut)

Now if anyone needs a bit of a push to post more regularly again… It’s this guy. With all that has transpired over the last year and a bit, it would be fair to say that my posting well and truly fell off a cliff and bounced off every rock on the way down, before landing in a rock pool at the bottom instead of the ocean.

It wasn’t just my posting here either, it was my general degree of interactivity with the community as a whole. And at the end of the day, that’s really what it’s all about. The community. The sharing of opinions, be they the same or divergent. To put our experiences within the realm of shared hobbies out there into the world.

While I’ve always maintained — and indeed, do still maintain — that to be successful at blogging, in terms of the mental fortitude required to keep going, you need to find your own why — a reason why you do it, that is largely for yourself. But equally, if that was all there was to it, there are plenty of more private avenues to collect such thoughts together. So even having found your own why, certainly there is room in that equation for sharing in the community spirit of it all.

So!

Whether you’re brand new to it all and never had more of a blog than the proto-thought of ‘Maybe that would be nice someday’ or whether you’re an old hand, with perhaps a few too many years in the saddle — at least head over and read Belghast’s post in full.

And then sign-up. Oh, and also join the Discord. And if I can really go and stretch things here, perhaps also consider joining the Mastodon/Fediverse server hosting part of #Blaugust2023. I did, finally. I’m not much of a heavy social media user, so don’t expect me to be posting every day or anything — but I do at least exist now, right… here.

Looking forward to Blaugustin’ with ya’s!