Forgetting My Own Advice
Since around this time last month, my posting has been in decline. Certainly in volume and I would suggest possibly quality, too. Now part of that I have to acknowledge as being general life rearing it’s head. It has been a bit of a tough time for the family at large and that has taken some time.
But it isn’t just that. Part of it has been a change in the way I think about posts. About what they ‘should’ be. But this wasn’t a conscious decision or change in thinking. It just sort of… Slipped in there, somewhere along the way, between now and Blaugust.
Heck, even as I sit here writing this I’m still trying to string together the thoughts around exactly what it is I changed.
At first I thought it was just about identifying topics to actually write about. But I don’t think that’s it. Not entirely. I have been bad about actually keeping track of ideas as they come. But it’s more than just that. More even than simply missing the time I might have otherwise dedicated to writing.
Alright, I’m circling. What I think I lost somewhere along the way though is being content with simply… talking. Having a conversation. Even if it is by power of the media a relatively one way conversation during this phase.
Somewhere along the way, I managed to get hung up in the thinking that a post had to ‘be’ something. There had to be a point or purpose. Some insight. Some…thing.
It’s not that I don’t see value in posting that way. There absolutely is. The problem is that I started to unconsciously see no value in posting more conversationally, this way.
I don’t know why, or how these feelings were shaped or where they came from. Particularly in light of the fact I still enjoyed reading such posts. Sometimes far moreso than than the posts-with-a-point I’d come to, for some reason, expect of myself to the exclusion of all else.
The mind is a wonderful thing, eh?
I suppose if I was to add a ‘point’ to this post it would be to serve as a reminder to myself and whoever else might need it that posts don’t necessarily need to have a point. (OK… Conflicting message there. I see it. ;))
You know — I now have a theory on why this happened. A year on from having started back here, I’m still very much looking to discover / develop my own writer’s voice. I haven’t quite got there yet. And looking back, I’m now amazed I thought it might return by the second month. Hah. Silly Nait. So naive. Anywho! I think perhaps in my pursuit of this, I’m frequently shifting up approaches to posting here.
The only constant is to just keep trying. But perhaps when something doesn’t immediately provide the results I’m after, knowingly or not, I move on to something else.
Maybe that’s why. Whether it is or isn’t though, this style is something I’d like to bring back and play with a little more.
