Well, here we are at the end of another year, and as usual I feel overwhelmed with all the loose ends I see around me: friendships neglected, projects unfinished (or not even begun), ambitions unrealized… the general sense that another twelve months have gotten away from me and I have nothing to blame for it but my own inability to get my shit together. This time of the year tends to make me feel very disappointed in myself.
I’m particularly disappointed with my blogging at the moment. After that long, long period when Simple Tricks was offline, followed by the painstaking process of reconstructing as many vaporized entries as I could salvage from archive.org, I really hoped I could just pick up again where I left off. Or even better, pick up from where I was a few years earlier, when the quality and quantity of my output was a lot more consistent. It hasn’t happened though, and I’ll be honest, it’s become a real struggle for me to produce much of anything for this space. I guess I was sidelined for too long. I got out of the habit, I lost too much momentum… however you want to describe it, I just can’t seem to get in the proper mindset. I’ve got at least a dozen half-written entries that are now weeks past their relevancy because I just can’t kick myself in the butt to actually finish them.
And there’s another problem, too, which I’ve mentioned before but bears repeating: Blogging in general seems to have become passe. Nobody seems to want to read anything longer than 140 characters these days, and even though I know I still have at least a few readers, our conversations mostly take place on social media platforms, not here. It’s hard to motivate myself when nothing I do here appears to attract any attention. I find myself thinking, more and more, that there’s an air of futility about this whole damn thing.
None of which is intended to be an announcement. I’m not walking away from Simple Tricks, even though there are times when I seriously think maybe I ought to. I am merely venting my frustrations, as another New Year’s Eve looms up in front of me and I begin to reflect, yet again, on all the miles I’ve run in the hamster wheel without actually going anywhere…
Yes, you should keep writing, whenever and however you want to. I have to share a quote from another (food) blog that I think of whenever I wonder if anyone cares about my cat pictures and sewing projects:
“Lesson 9: It All Goes Somewhere
There is literally no reason not to write. Nothing bad can come of it. Even if no one reads what you are writing, you have a chronicle of something. You are creating something. I’m not the first to say it, but the act of creating almost always leads you somewhere you never would have gone otherwise, and makes you see things differently. How is that ever bad?”
(from here: http://www.dinneralovestory.com/how-to-blog-my-rules/ )
Thanks, Karen… I appreciate that… and I know exactly what you’re saying, I just go through occasional bouts of feeling silly about it all, you know?