I was walking back to my flat last night after a long day at work when it occurred to me that I've not blogged in a long time. This, of course, has happened before but never have I felt such a profound feeling of losing a part of my identity as I felt when I started thinking back to the lofty days when I was producing (at least) two posts a week. And when I thought about it a bit more - the walk from the train station to the flat can sometimes drag on a bit - I realised that there are so many things that I don't do anymore that I was proud of or that made me happy. Heck, it would be nice to be able to make myself happy again without having to rely on other people.
So blogging is the big one. I think that the demise of this blog has naturally coincided with the toughest year of academics that I've ever done. When you go from writing so much, and thinking in the way that I was for some of the stuff I was writing, to not writing at all, you lose a little bit of an edge. If there is one thing I feel that I have lost over the last year or so is a little bit of an edge. Being able to step back and reflect on things is one of the most powerful things anyone can do regardless of what their chosen path is. I lost that, and as they say: you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone'.
It's been a tough start to 4th year for one reason or another. I haven't been able to get my head in the right place for a while now and I put that down, at least in part, to not making time to spraff away on here.
Another thing that I stopped doing a while back was keeping my daily journal. Up until May 27th of this year I had written an entry in my journal every day since December 23rd 2008. It didn't have to be very interesting, nor did it have to change my life in any way, but it allowed me to unload my day in one or two hundred words and then forget about it.
Talking about my journal, I used to spend a hour or so every couple of weeks reading back over old entries to see where I was on a certain day in a certain year. It amazed me the volume of work that I had put together over the years and the way in which it mapped every important detail of my life during that time. I stopped doing that though and so lost touch with all of the values that I used to have - whether they were positive or not, I still touch with lost them.
So what does all of this mean aside from the fact that I've clearly lost the ability to write a coherent and interesting blog post? It means that I have let something that was mine slip away. I used to love when people asked me about my blog or said that they had been reading it with interest - shock horror, that did happen once upon a time! I loved when people questioned me about what I had written or even when they told me that what I had written was rubbish. I felt like people were engaging with me in my metaphorical back garden. I quite fancy that back.
Now, we have been here many times before with the 'return' of this blog - and the one that went before it. I might wake up in the morning and feel like never writing again - there's a post for that! Never mind all of that though. That post that I've just linked to is a brilliant example of what I used to love doing; what used to really give me a kick when I pressed the publish button. I would like that back, and I think I'll be better for it if I get it back.
Thanks for sticking with tonight's post and I hope to see you here soon!
Martin
