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Anything is possible

May 27th, 2010
Cas

The question I have been asking myself for a while now is should I acknowledge the monumental lack of blogging activity, or just start up again, as if by ignoring the gap it won’t have happened.

But I can’t treat it like the elephant in the room; it is just not in me to do that. Just how did I go from such sparklingly-awesome blogging, to the desolation and tumbleweeds which have been prevalent the last year? Seriously, if Bright Meadow had been a puppy, you’d have called the RSPCA on me long since. What happened to the blogger at the peak of her game?

Would that I knew.

Was it Twitter taking all my thoughts? A job I adore in my dream sector? Living in a new and stunningly beautiful city? Perhaps it was just that I grew older.

Or a combination of all of the above with other things I don’t want to acknowledge in the mix.

What next? I genuinely don’t know. It hurts to think that Bright Meadow has reached the end of the line, but at the same time I just don’t know what I would write about if I was to start blogging daily/weekly again. I had a moment a few months back when 9rules went through more change and, what with one thing and another I gave up the leaf. It was a hard decision to take. 9rules was this HUGE thing that happened to me back in the summer of 2006. You cannot underestimate the sense of pride I had when I first put up the leaf. So to let it go?

Even now it makes me blink a bit in shock. But I just wasn’t the same blogger any more and the leaf wasn’t where I was at.

Yes, a part of me, a large part, wants to kick Bright Meadow back into gear to see if I can earn that leaf back. Just to see if I can. Because I still have it in me somewhere.

But should I? What would I get out of blogging consistently once more? Surely my efforts are better spent at writing that blasted book and living my life.

Bright Meadow though… It’s something special to me. I want it to have a future. I just don’t know what the future is.

Yet.

Continue the conversation
6 Responses to “Anything is possible”
Neko
May 27th, 2010 at 7:08 pm

I want the Meadow back in some form cherie! I am going to ressurect mine soon, the phd and twitter ated it : /

karmatosed
May 27th, 2010 at 7:09 pm

I say make brightmeadow a lifestream.. tumblr, flickr, twitter.. whatever but make it your lifestream and even the odd blog post if you feel the urge. You could even have a section where you have your writing on it. Personally, I’ve faced this ‘what to do’ with my own blog and I am going to be doing a semi lifestream myself although I am trying to keep blogging as much as time allows.

Abi
May 27th, 2010 at 7:19 pm

I completely understand. I haven’t blogged on HER in months. And you know what? It feels good now. My life is changing, has changed, will continue to change.

People don’t expect you to keep wearing the same shoes or hairstyle or read the same books or like the same movies your entire life. So why is there that expectation with a blog?

A blog is not a marriage. It is not a person. It is a bunch of code on the internet. A social artifact. And other things in your life can be social artifacts too.

Josh
May 27th, 2010 at 7:42 pm

I miss your blog a lot, but I get where you’re coming from, too.

Cheryl
May 27th, 2010 at 10:13 pm

I can totally understand your feelings — I don’t blog as much as I once did, either, and there’s definitely something to be said for spending your time DOING things instead of just writing about them. But it is good to exercise your writing muscles in a different way and to connect with kindred spirits in far-flung places. What about challenging yourself with a goal to put up a blog entry every other week? You could try it out and see where it takes you.

Tom Goskar
May 28th, 2010 at 11:04 am

I used to use blogs as a form of social networking - to find out what people were doing, what interested them, and that kind of thing. With the rise of Facebook and Twitter, I think people have less reason to blog.

Why write one long piece when you can write lots of smaller status updates? We can then always know what people are doing all of the time, and there’s no real reason to blog unless you write about a niche subject.

Aaah, oh for the days when Technorati was a ‘proper’ blog search engine, when it was mainly filled with the delights of personal and niche blogs, of real *people*. Now it’s full of spam blogs, large news corporations and blogging is mainstream. The real people have become harder to find. They’re still there, but many have become lost in the noise and rebelled against their own created obligations (to blog regularly).

My own blogs have languished in recent years. Some of it was definitely a phase, the discovery and chase of this online publishing lark, of ‘taking back the media’. Then it all starts to get to be a bit of a chore..

But, being the butterfly I am, I’ve been wanting to flit back to blogging in recent months. I’m a bit fed up with the obligations of Facebook, and of the short attention span of it. I contribute to lots of review sites, give them content. This is all stuff that I could be putting out on my own blog as well, taking back what’s mine.

It’s nice to have my blog to go back to, when I want. When I want to say something to the world in general of friends. I say no to a lifestream blog (tried that, and felt guilty and lazy), make it a special place for writing longer pieces, but try not to think of it as something you’re obliged to do. Let comments and questions be the reminder, not a week ritual.

Personally speaking, it would be nice to hear a bit about life in the publishing industry and things to do in Oxford.

Enjoy sporadic and inspired blogging, and it might just help to reignite the mojo I think you do want to regain :-)

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