Blaugust and Me
Writing is tiring
I wrote a personal introduction for Blaugust last year which still serves its purpose, so I hope you’ll forgive me for not repeating such a post. I thought instead I’d talk a little about Blaugust and my relationship with blogging. I have always enjoyed writing, both creatively and analytically, since school. I was very fortunate to have had several very good English teachers that fostered in me a love of verbal expression and good books. It was therefore only logical that I kept journals and diaries in my younger days and when the internet came along, moved onto writing online. This August, I will have been blogging in some shape or form for 17 years. This blog, Contains Moderate Peril, has existed in several previous iterations. The current site, hosted via Squarespace, has been around for nine years. I believe it has over a thousand posts of varying quality. Then there’s the podcast that accompanied the blog for many years. That is currently on an extended hiatus but who knows, it may make a return one day.
As you can see, I like writing and enjoy having a specific site for my thoughts and ideas. For me that is one of the main attractions of blogging. It is a means to process one’s thoughts about the world we live in. It is also a means of sharing ideas and mutual pleasures with other like minded people. I have met many people through blogging and remain on agreeable terms with many of them, years on. In fact I would go so far as to say that when Contains Moderate Peril gained some traction circa 2014 and the podcast had a modest audience, these were among the best times I’ve had. However, that was due to a perfect storm of events which were unique to that period. Things have moved on now, as they always do. Blogging is still an excellent pastime but I feel that for me, that period of time between 2010 and 2015 was a golden era.
If you need to take a break then do so
However, blogging regularly takes time and commitment. It often has to compete with other real world issues. Hence we can find ourselves suffering from fatigue and burnout. Or it may be a case of after a while, we just want to do something else. On two occasions I have taken an extended break from blogging. I took three months off in early 2016 and recently stepped away for nine months. Although I didn’t have the stamina at the time to sustain a regular writing regime, the moment I stopped I immediately started to miss it. Which brings me back to Blaugust. Its timely arrival presents me with a perfect opportunity to get back into writing. I shall see if I can produce a daily post for the entire month. I already have about a dozen draft posts waiting in the wings. Furthermore we seem to have gained a particularly enthusiastic and communicative group of new participants this year which is a real boon.
I am fortunate to be in a position where I can focus quite a lot of energy and more importantly time, into Blaugust. I have effectively retired (early) and am currently spared the treadmill of full time employment. I have a spare bedroom that I use as an office and it provides a suitable writing environment. Beyond the festival of blogging, I would like to develop some long standing writing goals that I’ve had outstanding for several years. I have a non-fiction book that has been mapped out and prepped, that I would like to move forward with. I just need to bite the bullet and start putting the meat on the bones. I would also like to see if it is possible to grow the audience of Contains Moderate Peril, back to the levels it enjoyed a decade ago. That however is a more complex proposition, as the blog had the promotional advantage of an accompanying podcast. However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s concentrate on the next 30 days of Blaugust first.
