The Pressure of the Blog

A couple of months ago I was trying to produce a post a day for this blog. I kept it up for a while but eventually it became too much; I was exhausted, empty and unable to think coherently. Fortunately, a planned trip to Vicksburg coincided with this and I was able to recharge over those few days.

It did result in a change of tactics, however. When I returned, I resolved to go for one post every two days and not to worry if occasionally there was a longer gap. This has worked well enough and eased the pressure a little.

Notice that I said "a little", however. Easy enough to make bold statements about not worrying; not so easy to actually cease to care. Today I find myself under pressure once again, this time because of my last post.

Quite frankly, I hate it. "Heroes" was written in haste, without a clear goal in mind but in the hope that one would turn up on the way through. I had a vague idea of drawing some high moral from the whole thing but, when I came to it, I realized that it just wasn't "me" to pontificate in such a manner. So I took the easy route out and wrote a glib conclusion, there being no time left to do anything else (I was committed to an appointment later that day and it was drawing uncomfortably close).

As a result, the post just embarrasses me. I wish now that I'd had the courage to admit that it was not good enough and to have delayed it until the next day. But the deed is done and now I suffer the consequences: a desperate need to cover it up quickly with another post. And I suppose it was always inevitable that today, with this pressure on me, I would find myself without any idea of what to write about. It is only what I deserve, I suppose.

So I have to resort to the Nothing Post. I have talked about this savior of the blogger before (in A Nothing Blog) and in that post I gave a list of some good blogs that I'd found. But today pressure is on my mind and it makes sense that I should write about it, therefore.

Pressure comes from setting goals. Were this blog a personal diary, there would be no insistence that I have something to say on every second day. Were it a collection of links to news stories or amusing discoveries, I could spend an hour or so cruising the net and collecting a few items to link to. But I have elected to produce original and interesting (hopefully) articles on a regular basis with the intention of establishing a readership large enough to be noticed. To do that, I have to keep producing the goods. If I miss a few days, the readers will start to wander off (and who can blame them? I do the same when a blog I'm following isn't updated regularly).

The result of this is pressure and that is not necessarily a bad thing. The blog has forced me to be far more productive than at any other time in my life. The practice in writing that it gives me is honing skills that had grown rusty over the last few years when I was working in a job that required every last ounce of energy that I could find. It has also made me consider carefully my initial goals and to re-think them in some areas. The business of blogging is more complex than I had imagined and is developing at a phenomenal rate. There may be unforeseen possibilities in it and this means that I have to keep an eye on the latest thinking on the future of blogging (Syntagma is an excellent source of news in this regard).

But the pressure hurts on those days when there is nothing to say. Oh, I've had a few ideas while I was pondering this morning but all of them require time to develop. There was no way I was going to repeat the mistake of "Heroes" today! In the end I have had to resort to this, a Nothing Post. I know full well that it's nothing more than a moan, a railing at the blog for its pitiless demands on me. Just this once I have allowed myself a cry of anguish in public.

There will be those out there who will know what I'm talking about and will sympathize. To them I say: use the Nothing Post occasionally - it's great for easing the pressure!