A couple of years ago I set out on a goal to have a more regular publishing schedule here on Xadara. The idea was Monday through Friday publishing which would result in around, if I posted an entry per day, a little over 20 entries a month.
On the surface it was a fine idea — emulate a “normal” work week, allow myself to not worry about writing on weekends, and then start all over again come Monday. For a while it worked pretty well, with the occasional “off” day and of course longer breaks thrown in (especially over 2020, as I felt I needed it) but as time passed I realized what I waas trying to escape – the feeling that I “have to write” when I come up with an idea, was replaced by a need to keep the Monday through Friday writing schedule solid. I felt bad for skipping days, especially recently Thursday and Friday which happen to be on most weeks the tail end of a more rough work period for me. I’m too tired when I get home dealing with game systems to want to write about games and technology. and I wouldn’t, leading to pretty regular gaps.
Sometimes I’d slip in a weekend entry to balance things out (like this one, which is being written and published on a Saturday) but I felt like that was betraying what schedule I had set myself up with. The idea behind the schedule was to make things more expected, or predictable — you knew when something was coming. You may not know what, but you knew Monday through Friday I would write something. The problem is that isn’t how it actually panned out. In my effort to make more time for myself I had just forced the time I had to enjoy writing into a smaller period, putting more pressure on myself than anything else!
In short, I had made the mistake yet again of turning this blog into work. It was never supposed to be that, and while I’d like to get paid for it I don’t want to turn it into my career. Far from it, I feel that would ruin what makes it valuable to the reader, and yet so many actions which would otherwise make sense to work on any other blog were tried here and, given who I am as a person and how my life is, it all just didn’t work out.
That’s a good thing though – it’s all part of the learning experience in life. While I’ve been writing for years I’ve constantly been trying new things, seeing what sticks and what doesn’t. That’s what I think makes this place interesting is that I keep trying new things. I want it to be the best it can be without losing what makes it unique and if going back to an honest “publish whenever the hell I want” schedule will help that, then that’s what I’ll do.
Blogging. It’s a hobby…. one that will drive ya’ mad at times.
