Wow, a week without posting. Even with my current blogapathy (if you didn’t notice it then I’m obviously just being self conscious about it) that’s pretty bad.
Fact is I’ve been working for the first time since quitting the airport job a month back and while the job isn’t so bad (stock picking food for M&S in a cold storage warehouse) and only lasts a week, it’s in fucking Thatcham, between Newbury and Reading. Yes, I’m still living in Birmingham. I get picked up from the centre of town at 8.00am, work from 10 to 6 and get dropped off again at a little after eight. Add on my bus journey to and from home and I’m away for a little under 14 hours a day, every day since Friday. The pay is reasonably good (should net £345 before tax for five days brainless work) and tomorrow is the last day but right now I’m fucked. Six hours a day traveling is not good, especially as I find is really hard to get comfortable on coach seats. Moan moan, bloody moan. All ends tomorrow, then Xmas joy (major family stuff for nearly a week!) , then a nice short period of no-work, then back on the temp wagon again.
Here’s a question. I know I’ve got a small band of loyal readers out there. What do you want me to write about? Do you want tales of surreal temp work? The minutiae of my daily life? Strident but ill-thought-out opinions? Diatribes on the role of the outsider-non-artist railing against but dependent upon modern consumerist society? More of those tutorial thingies I started dabbling in? More photos? Brutally honest dark moments of the soul?
This is kinda important to me as I’ve been losing my way with this blog since moving to Birmingham. Actually, since stopping the Farmblog really. I’ve toyed with splitting it into multiple blogs, stripping it down to an LMG style linklog, starting up a new, anonymous diary blog somewhere or even just scrapping the whole thing and starting again, but I think the best thing to do is just keep going only with a better focus on what I’m doing this for.
When I read a non-specific mish-mash blog like my own I tend to read it selectively. skimming through some posts (for example ones on poetry) and dwelling on others (for example ones on music) and I imagine people do the same with mine. So, please let me know what aspects of this blog you actually read, either in the comments or, if you prefer, by email.
Thanks. (And sorry for rambling. I’m very tired…)
>Here’s a question. I know I’ve got a small band of loyal readers out there. What do you want me to write about? Do you want tales of surreal temp work? The minutiae of my daily life? Strident but ill-thought-out opinions? Diatribes on the role of the outsider-non-artist railing against but dependent upon modern consumerist society? More of those tutorial thingies I started dabbling in? More photos? Brutally honest dark moments of the soul?
Yes. Thankyou. One of the things I really appreciate about your blog is the variety.
… and yes, I skim (over family posts, for example) but I still like to know it’s all there.
An option could be to run a personal blog and a display blog in tandem — an idea I’ve been toying with as I know damn well I have readers who could live without my odder posts, which nevertheless are important for me (LJ’s handy privacy features are occasionally helpful — but I feel like I’m cheating when I start presenting a partial view).
You could do that with views, maybe? — offer a cherry view and a warts-and-all view … though I often find that my ideas of what is good are not the same as other peoples’ … and even the vague act of skimming is also reading. I’d probably just go straight for warts-and-all and let my judgement do the legwork.
By all means focus, but keep it flexible enough that you can still write about whatever you want. Oh, and you should really start some sort of photo-project again, I miss the grids.
I just lke reading your blog to keep up to date with what you are doing. The variety is fine. I’m useless at posting stuff about my life so no point asking me for advice on blogs :)
Anyway, to answer your question, yes. All of it. Anything. It doesn’t matter if people skip over bits that aren’t interesting to them. I don’t imagine my mum is very worried about programming the MS Agent from C#, but it doesn’t matter. She likes to know I’m working and that nobody’s ill. Actually, I don’t think any of my handful of regular readers are interested in the Agent. Still don’t care, because I write those things for Google. Google will bring the people who want to know that stuff, in the way that it brought all those people to your post about the DSL modem and your Mac. So write it all.
I’ve been thinking about these things recently in a similar way to you, which is why I’ve started the recipe stuff, the programming stuff – currently the Agent, a few little photos. I’m just trying things out. I don’t get stressed if I don’t write anything for a few days. I might not have anything to write about. Might just be too busy – I should have written about the freaky weirdness of seeing two policeman walking through Rotunda square carrying machine guns last Saturday, but didn’t have time. Doesn’t matter, because I know I’ll come back to it sooner or later.
Just do it. Change it around. Write about different things. Change it back. Write about your calloused toe. Don’t worry about it. It isn’t a burden. And if it is, make it so it isn’t.
Just write about what you like. Eventually categories diverge or merge. If you post a lot of items in one category on a regular basis, you’ll know it’s time to split off a topic blog.
I’ve got two main blogs and they seem to be slowly converging, which is a good thing.
All of it and keep the honesty, it’s what makes it all work so well. Yes I miss the farmblog, still think there is good material for publishing (if not a book, then at least some articles for magazines, etc.)
The Mac stuff is always interesting to us in the minority, so keep that going. BTW, there is an Apple Centre at the Palisades above New Street Station and they know a thing or two about Macs!
Also, relating to your photos, the ferris wheel on Centenary square is not only the one from Paris, it still has “Roue de Paris” on each car!
I’ve thought about this for a few days and I think your writing much better when you have a (for the want of a better word) ‘project’ on the go. Just think of something to aim at in your life and people will come (to paraphrase something or other).
Matt’s right. Anyone got an idea for a project?
Haven’t you just got a new one in http://stator.org/ ?
Oh, yea. And the programming thing.
Yeah, but Stator is seperate from the blog. The programming thing is kinda away from the blog. I was thinking more of a thing-to-write-about, like the farmblog was.
I’m erring towards industrial temping, since I expect to be doing that for the next few months.