Blogging The Blog 13: Still Here After 5 Years

I have worried right throughout 2012 that I would run out of things to post in this blog.  I suppose if it dies from lack of issues to discuss then it dies.  Today, however, it is more about acknowledging the fact that five years on from beginning this blog it is still active.  As I wrote back in 2007 the typical life of a blog is 3 months.  It serves a particular focus and then it expires.  Blogs that last longer have something that keeps sustaining them.  I guess this is one reason why there are more blogs about fashion than anything else.  Fashion keeps changing, new styles come in, old ones are revived again and in between time there is room for lots of discussion not only about what the style looks like and how much it costs but how it looks on the blogger and other contributors to the site.  There is a constant refreshing of topics.

My blog has generally lack that regular refuelling.  In the first couple of years there was a large backlog of things that had been on my mind for many years.  Getting them on to this blog got them out of my system and I found that was good for establishing piece of mind.  In addition, bringing in my back catalogue of fiction, reminiscences and travel journals and photographs provided more material.  However, both of these sources were effectively 'fossil fuels' for the blog.  Similar sources were the various maps that I uncovered or 'borrowed' to put on this blog, though new ones do occasionally appear.  Counter-factual discussions are a finite source, but there are so many remaining that I could simply just do them as postings for the rest of this year and not run out.  Other more 'renewable' sources of discussion have come from the news.  The insane period in terms of the global economy and British politics we have experienced over the past five years and the deepening of social trends bubbling up since the 1990s have been a basis of discussion which is regularly renewing.  It is interesting how many people I have spoken to have felt that British society has seen a marked deterioration, primarily in respect over this period.  The UK in 2012 is certainly a much less pleasant place to live in even than it was in 2002.  That decade has also seen a decline in opportunities and the worsening of the quality of living for ordinary people.

Against this background, my own woes have provided far more postings than I ever would have envisaged back in May 2007.  At that stage we had been compelled to leave the house we had rented due to the landlord divorcing, but I was not yet aware of the fact that the landlord of the place we moved to had already defaulted on the mortgage and his father who acted as agent was set to intimidate us for months.  I was not aware either that I was going to go through two periods of redundancy and encounter two incredibly nasty line managers, though given what I have said in the paragraph above about the deterioration of the economy and British society, maybe I could have foreseen that that would have impacts on me personally.  If our landlord had behaved decently and if someone else rather than me had been selected for the first redundancy or even if I had been able to find work more quickly after that, then a lot of the entries on this blog would be missing. 

Now I once again face both losing my job and my house.  In many ways I am weary of the instability that the past six years have brought and just wish I had had less material for this blog.  On the other hand, without this blog, I know that I would have handled things far less effectively.  This blog has been a great release for me.  It is like a diary but one freed in large part from chronological constraints.  Not only has writing about the bad things that have happened to me provided release, it has also provided support, some of which has been featured in the comments on this blog but has also been 'offline' in emails.  It may be wrong to air one's troubles but the benefits have been great for me and I have no regret in doing so.  Perhaps in some cases it has even helped others to see they are not alone in experiencing these challenges.

I do think that this blog is nearing the end of its natural life.  My own life does not seem to be approaching any degree of stability and given the economic climate may not do so for many years from now.  However, I am finding that I have covered so many topics, that 'new' things I turn to write about seem very much like what I have written before.  Perhaps updates are all that will come to this blog in the future.  Of course, much of what I have discussed here is not what attracts the largest audience to this blog.  Certainly it seems that if I want to gain fame for this blog I should simply write essays on James Bond movies.  This along with counter-factual analysis which can be used in school level essays appear to be the main draws.  Naturally it was never about the audience, it was more about a the anger/despair management that blogging provides and this blog has done that service very well.

Struggling With The New Blogger Interface

When I came to write a new posting today I found that the blog interface had changed and it has proven to be an utter nightmare.  Every five words or so the system backs up what I have written, freezing the screen and leaving my laptop to labour with its fan going at full blast.  The interface cannot keep up with the speed I type at.  Every saving wastes about twenty seconds let alone losing the words that I have typed in after it decided to save.  Even this short posting has taken many minutes to produce and it means a longer piece is going to need much more time than use to be the case with the former interface.  Given the frustration of having to write and stop, write and stop, not knowing at which moment I am going to be interrupted by the system, I do not know if I have the patience to continue with this blog.  It is very, very irritating now and so causes tension whereas in the past it has been an outlet for tension.  Why do companies always feel they have to 'improve' a system when in fact they end up providing you with something so much worse than what was available before?  They have probably now wrecked the good reputation they once had for blogging facilities.  I, for one, am now looking for some other host with a much less stupid interface!

Blogging The Blog 9: Running Out Of Steam?

This is my 600th blog posting which may seem an odd number to commemorate but when I look down the list of postings for editing they are listed in groups of 300 so I am now at the top of my second page.  This blog has now been running for two years and nine months compared to the three months which is supposed to be the average.  However, as the few postings last month show, perhaps I am running out of things to say.  I think in part it is now that I am in a job and so do not have the time between writing applications to comment on the world, nor the time to read the newspaper or websites to pick up stories to explore.  I think a large part of the problem is that when I started the blog I had a lot of ideas, complaints and observations, fiction too, that I had been carrying around for many years looking for an outlet.  Over the past couple of years I have probably covered the bulk of those things and with me not going on holiday or travelling anywhere new and now having a very shrunken social circle compared to ten years ago, I am just not getting new input to stimulate comments. 

I identified three types of blog: the journal blog, the scrapbook blog and the anger management blog.  In terms of the journal blog, I have too few new experiences to warrant postings of that kind. I do get some, but they tend to be a reflection on what I read in the newspapers and what I see on the road.  Having to travel for my work and being holed up in a hotel room for much of the week, these are narrow horizons so reduce the stimulus that would provoke blog postings.  In terms of travel I have not left the UK for almost two years now and that time it was only for two days.  I have not been on holiday even in the UK for almost two years and on that occasion I was so ill I could not appreciate it.  I have no holidays planned and not even any work travel outside my daily and wekely commutes. Consequently, experiences outside my home and work towns are limited and even in them I move in very small circles from home to the shops and back and from the hotel to work and back.  There is some artificial input from recounting my journeys of decades passed, but by definition they are finite and I am going to soon run out.  Also it simply emphasises how little I am doing with my life these days.

The lack of source material also applies to me doing a scrapbook blog, I have scoured the internet for items of interest to me to include and until I begin a new interest have exhausted the supply. With my addicition to online gaming and when tired of that, basic computer gaming, I am not even writing fiction to potentially fill these pages.  Detective novels set in Weimar Germany seem to be an established sub-genre these days so the wind has been taken from my sails in that regard as I see these books selling on Amazon and know my stories will never get to that situation.  I no longer have the time to write things and knowing how many amateurs are out there writing (between 42-49,000 novels are entered at a time for amateur writing competitions that are run in the UK) it seems pointless to add my stuff to the pile anyway.

I have come to realise that there is another type of blog: the review blog and there seems to be hundreds of these reviewing things  especially like fashion and interior design. The trouble with me is that I consume things far too late to have a review blog.  I read books I buy from charity shops; I only watch movies on DVDs; I have not bought new clothes for years; my household items are  second hand or remaindered.  My reviews of movies or pop music or computer games tend to come long after the things I am looking at have gone out of fashion.

I anticipate, that all I will have left is the fourth type of blog: the anger management blog.  I noticed that not blogging much last month did leave me far more tense and crotchety than usual.  However, whilst the blog is clearly an outlet for my anger it also seems to foster it and it seems that I am even running out of things to be angry about.  I guess there will be the election and especially if the Conservatives win, I will be complaining about the even more divided and poor country that will be being constructed, but that will be about it.  Being angry in my blog is good for me, and may offer consolation for people feeling angry about the same things, but perhaps is insufficient a resource to sustain my blog for long.

Once I had envisaged this blog going on for many years, but now it seems to be starved of source material just as my life is empty of experiences and will be as long as I am clinging to short-term contracts and cannot afford to do anything except save for the next period of unemployment.  I envisage that existing going on indefinitely from now on, especially given that my sector of industry looks on the verge of a severe collapse.  While I may have reached the 600 posting mark, I have little expectation that I will reach 700.  Maybe that is right.  Perhaps this blog is dwindling because I have said everything that I need to get out of me and from now on would simply end up repeating myself as I encounter the same irritations again and again.

My Worst Week

Looking back in my life there have been bad weeks. Ones that probably stand out were in 1986 when I failed my 'A' levels and one a couple of years later in 1988 when I was diagnosed with diabetes. I forgot the week in 1993 when I failed my teacher training course and was bullied by one of the tutors standing on my doorstep trying to get me to sign a document absolving the college. Being dumped twice by the same woman in different parts of 2003 probably comes close and was no less painful the second time than the first. This week though, must be somewhere in that hall of notoriety. Given the physical symptoms I experienced and the exhaustion I have faced since, I think I was close to having a breakdown. I bellowed at colleagues and stormed out of a meeting. I think having six days of disasters of holiday last year as my only break and no holiday before that since 2005, plus the tensions of Christmas and worries over my employment prospects were already leading me into difficulties.

Taking some time off work and simply slumping in front of the television seems to have remedied things a little but there is still quite a toll to pay in the months to come for what happened this week. I know there are people out there suffering job losses, bankruptcy and house repossession so my worries must seem minor. However, this blog was always about getting the tension out of myself, in that Roman style throwing away that lead tablet in the waters of the internet and making myself feeling just a little better, so I make no apologies for doing that now. This week my computer gave up the ghost against the assault of constant Trojan attacks (surely they should be 'Greeks' rather than Trojans as it was the Greeks who built the horse that went into the city of Troy, so Troy represents your PC and the Greeks are the attackers; perhaps it is because Greece still exists and Greeks might be offended, but when did you last meet a Trojan and I do not mean the condoms). It took PC World 6 days to fix it. My car engine now sounds like it has a lawnmower in it, it is tapping in a strange way which could just be lack of oil or the big end having gone. I was told by my most optimistic boss that there is no hope for me at my current company. I have six months to find a job until my contract expires but it will mean moving yet again to find work, having been in this current house only 13 months so far and in three others since 2005.

The woman in my house is coming home early from the USA, having had her son removed from my care because I threw up my hands in despair at looking after him. In fact given the approaching breakdown though complex with hindsight it was probably the best thing to do. My girlfriend is also splitting from me too. I suppose given the need to move for work, perhaps these are not bad things and may make the next steps easier. Disentangling the mortgage is going to be the toughest aspect. I have absolutely no optimism for my future now. If it proves to be as tough as this week I imagine I will get clinically depressed or will collapse from excessive blood pressure as felt would be the case earlier this week. I have no doubts by January 2009 I will be writing this blog using a dial-up connection from a house in Coventry where I will be renting a room as a lodger. To reverse New Labour's terribly misplaced slogan, 'things can only get worse' and the newspapers, radio and television keep reaffirming that.

(The optical mouse I am using has started going haywire now too and keeps logging me out soe even this short posting has been a real labour. I feel at present everything I touch turns to dung.)

P.P. 29/01/2009 - well it may be becoming my worst fortnight. I managed to get the woman in my house back from the USA without difficulty. I think I was on the verge of a breakdown and having spent four days simply watching TV and DVDs feel a lot better equipped to face the world. However, the car problems got far worse and I had to take it in for repair as it began losing power. It turned out the head gasket had gone, a repair costing £500-£1000 depending on the damage and as I had only spent £1600 to buy the car, which is 12 years old now, even the mechanic said not to bother repairing it. We found it difficult to get a scrap merchant to take the car, two refused because there is a glut of scrapped cars (many newer than mine) in my home town, but ultimately I got £70 for it. Today I am off to see if I can buy a new car. I do hope that tomorrow, Friday, the current spate of problems will come to an end. It is both very wearying and expensive.

Anger - the Reasons I Have It

I have just been watching a two-part programme called 'Losing It' which comedian, writer and yachtsman, Griff Rhys Jones produced for the BBC. It looked at anger and its implications. As many commentators have noted (including myself back in May 2007 and June 2008) the World, especially the UK is becoming an angrier place. We have a 'rage' for everything from the life-threatening 'road rage' to the less dangerous 'trolley rage' in supermarkets. As I have noted, we are tutored in how to behave by what we see on television with sportsmen (and some sportswomen) having fights on the pitch and ordinary people raging at airline check-in desks for us to study. The widespread abuse of alcohol and drugs in the UK just adds to this tendency, especially among the young, not only men but also women. To some degree part of this stems from the fact that in the UK most of us are powerless to change anything in our lives and are constantly reminded of the fact. Politics is so sewn up that we (nor Gordon Brown) can do anything about rising costs or getting a decent school for our children or proper care for our elderly relatives. Consequently we explode at those people we can 'control', the person cutting us up in the car or looking at us in a strange way and it gives us, for a moment, a sense that we can assert some control. Ironically, in that moment we actually lose control but it does make us feel better.

Rhys Jones did note, however, that in making the angry person feel better, it makes those around them feel much worse in particular vulnerable, even if they have no fear that they will be hit or shouted at, it is just the 'electricity' around an angry person that makes them feel uncomfortable. Anger is often a cry to help, which is why we often get angry around people we are close to and love, because we feel we have permission to show our vulnerable side in their presence in a way we would not with strangers. Becoming visibly angry is showing a vulnerable side as it is when you have no rational thought and sometimes even lose physical control. However, often those close to us cannot accept the burden of that vulnerability not being let out bit-by-bit but in an intense way in a short period of time. There are many forms of anger, but for most people, they stem from feeling weak and unable to affect outcome. In this way, we are, as Rhys Jones showed, like toddlers who have tantrums. Toddlers are aware of their vunerability and their inability to alter the people or environment around them and so all they have left is their anger which they have in the most physical and vocal way possible.

To some extent, modern society, stripping so many of us of any control of our lives, infantilises us. People are unable financially to stand on themselves until into their 30s and 40s, and are often economically dependent on their parents for much of their lives, so is it unsurprising that as a result we cling to childish behaviour so much longer? I am almost 41 and without my parents I would still be living in scummy rented accommodation. I do think people do get more angry than in the past, but that is partly because in our youth we are told the big lie that we can 'have it all'. In the past people were told from childhood onwards that so much would be denied to them. Of course, most things are still denied to us, but we are lied to constantly both as children and as adults, by the media, so it makes it harder to accept the truth when it hits us. The other thing, is that we have lost a sense of shame. People flaunt so much of what would have been private once, this is in terms of sexuality, in how we dress, etc., also in terms of our wealth and possessions, but in particular in terms of our emotions. Though British people do not behave to the extreme that Americans do (remember the tennis player John McEnroe's televised tantrums in the 1970s, though mirrored by British comedy versions, notably from John Cleese), but nowadays we are encouraged to express all our emotions whether joyful, sad or angry in public in a way that would have been strongly discouraged in the past. As I have noted before, there is almost a reward for this, as we see those who make the most fuss, winning what they want, so are tempted to follow their lead.

I also think we have a greater sense of pride and take slights more strongly than we would have done in the past. This was noticeable in the programme when Rhys Jones was interviewing Chanelle Hayes who had had a tantrum on the Channel 4 'reality' programme 'Big Brother'. He was talking about the televised trantrum with her, and she said it was a rare occurrence for her, but then began getting upset with Rhys Jones in the course of the short interview because he would not let her drone on with her self-justifying, and clearly untrue monologue, and then she took offence at what she felt was a slur on her character, when Rhys Jones was simply trying to ask her questions about the incident. As there is so little for us to be proud about, we defend even those little crumbs or put up a front of indignation as if we had a lot more to defend than is actually the case.

An interview with George Galloway, an MP who I have met, was interesting. He has 'indignation' rather than anger and clearly distinguished between losing one's temper and having this indignation against wrong. Of course he linked this to big issues not imagined slurs and petty things. However, most of us have lost any connection with the big issues. We know we can do nothing about them so lack the channels in which to put our indignation, say on temperance, religion, Communism, Fascism, unemployment, the poll tax, etc., that our ancestors would have done.

As I have noted before, I do have a temper. The programme showed that I am in the prime category for it on a number of grounds, bar having a raised level of testosterone. In some ways I am de facto in the camp of parents of young children, who are the people most prone to anger, due to the six year old living in my house. Anger is a natural part of not only human nature but also animals such as apes, so it is never going to be eliminated unless we adopt a 'Brave New World' approach and castrate and sedate all men. However, some individuals are more prone to it turning into a more aggressive form than others and I tick many of those boxes.

The first is that I am male and that we cannot shake off the need of anger and violence that meant our descendants survived when many others died out over the millenia. Though women are catching up in the anger stakes, partly because they sense their powerlessness, especially in trying to achieve things for their families. For me anger is not purely mental, it is physical too. I feel as if there is a bug jabbing into the base of my neck and another at the base of my spine and those two bugs are not sated and certainly not dismissed until I have shouted myself hoarse and my heart is thumping so heavily I can feel it against my chest cavity and my stomach is sour and I feel pain down there. This is not good for my health, but surely it is better than having this seething inside me over a sustained period, shouting, swearing, revving the car engine may have consequences, but they relieve the uncomfortable symptoms and when the bugs are jabbing at you that is all you can think of.

The other thing is that I care. If I did not give a damn about how people behave or how our society was run then there would be so much less to get angry about. I think there is a right way that the World should work and that people should behave. In some ways I am seeking to police what I see as unacceptable behaviour. This wish to police is at the root of road rage in particular. I drive with a very moral sense of what is the correct behaviour I want to see and will hoot or bellow at those who I feel are behaving inappropriately. I have set myself up as a guardian of the wider community. Partly this is because there are no other outlets for this attitude in modern society.

This is why there are people always willing to be police informants. Whilst it is not as visible this attitude is what drives people to write letters to the tax office or benefit office, 'shopping' (i.e. highlighting them to the authorities) people they feel are flouting the regulations, or in particular, exploiting the state to their advantage. For me I simply blog and as I have noted before that is the contemporary form of letter writing to authorities, with the added bonus that it can come to the attention of people who feel the same and can sympathise. Message boards, online conferencing, are excellent outlets for this mind set, though even here 'flaming', the electronic form of bellowing at people can become an issue.

I have an attention to detail which is another indicator of someone liable to get angry. This is because we can get offended by minor things being 'wrong' or out of place. I certainly get angered by behaviour which I feel is unfair as if the World must be in perfect balance in terms of justice (some people would say this is because I am a Libran, if you believe that) and at present I feel that the unjust, the greedy, the mean, the bullies, the torturers, the selfish, all have the upper hand to a greater extent than before, so there is even more to fight for than would 'normally' be the case. My attention to detail means there is anger on so many issues that can trigger me off. Also, I am not satisfied by a quick outburst. As I am a reflective person (over 200 blog postings this year alone) I mull over the things that make me angry, literally keeping my anger 'simmering' so it is far closer to the surface when I encounter the next issue to irritate me, than if I could finish off one issue before moving on to another.

The other element which I had not really thought about before was having low self-esteem. I suppose this relates to what I have said about feeling so powerless to achieve anything in contemporary Britain. However, it goes beyond that to say, not only can you not achieve anything in the future, but everything you have done in the past was also valueless. In our 'dog-eat-dog' business world, of course people say that to you. The worst bullying I suffered at work was based on saying that I could take no solo credit for anything I had produced in that job. I am a good team player and will often downplay my role, so to hear that was very hard and really sapped my self-esteem to the extent I felt there was no point in producing anything, and, of course, that was what the bully wanted as he had effectively removed a rival for promotion.

Of course, being someone with suicidal tendencies, as outlined here, I do have low self-esteem, so again that is likely to make me angry. It is, as I say, that when you hit rock bottom, all you have left is your anger, it is the last scrap of self-dignity that you have. It is the one thing that you can fire off which draws some attention and brings some value to you, if only, because you disrupt the lives, even for a short period, of the people moving around you. It literally gets your voice heard even if your words are not heard. Anger is something that needs no other interaction, you can do it alone. This is why it is difficult for others around you, especially those close to you, to cope with, because it unsettles them as it is a very selfish activity. Of course, other people behave equally as selfishly, but because they do it calmly it does not face the condemnation that anger does, thought it is as equally corrosive to relationships and society and is likely to be sustained than over in a short time.

Having watched 'Losing It', I feel I am more normal than I thought I was. I find there were particular character traits which make me more prone to anger and likely to sustain that over a longer period. I see no solutions. I am as powerless to alter my context as any other ordinary person in the UK today. The fact that I will lose my job and my house next year simply adds to that sense. It also reduces my self-esteem, because time after time, I have been shown that no matter how hard I work or how I behave I still can achieve nothing, certainly in terms of the stability I am yearning at this age, and I am simply buffeted from job to job and from house to house with no control over what happens next. I could stop paying attention to detail, but that is an element of my work, so would make me slapdash and less effective as an employee. I think having been this way for four decades, it would be difficult to shake off. So, I will stick with anger, it is the only little bit of pride I have left. After I have lost everything, I know I can still get angry and have my voice heard even if just for half-an-hour. Here is me shouting and it feels a little better.

Blogging the Blog 6: Self-Serving?

On Friday in an idle moment I followed up a few of the links on the 'Blogs of Note' from Blogger and came to 'When Tara Met Blog': http://www.tarametblog.com/ Now her blog could not be further away from mine, (though I do note her noting encounters with minor celebrities too), hers is all pink, almost anti-Goth (as in like anti-matter, not opposed to Goth) in its nature. Hers has been running for over three years, so she is well passed the usual life expectancy of a blog. She likes free giveaway items and twee things and has blogged about dating in New York and is now engaged in Los Angeles.

So, what was there to interest me on this blog? It is the posting of 8th May 2008, 'Are blogs self-serving?'. Apparently Tara had been challenged by a friend that her blog was simply there to serve herself. Tara defended her blog and like me she has found solace from blogging through the hard times. In this role it is no different to keeping a diary. Of course diaries may be seen as self-serving too, but the result of them is that the diarist/blogger is in a much better mental state to get on with their lives, so actually to be less of a burden to others. As she notes, you get feedback from people with an interest in similar things and often if you have a problem, are very supportive. If people are not interested then they do not have to read it. It is an excellent way to get out anger without harming anyone else. So, it is rather like a diary that you keep but you share with a therapy or help group.

I suppose we are in a generation in which everyone feels they have to be some sort of celebrity and it is interesting that celebrities are often keen bloggers, but maybe for the reverse effect, to show that they are real people under all the hype. So maybe blogging is our five minutes in the spotlight. However, given how much stuff is out there on the internet and how many blogs alone there are, it is hardly as if we are jabbing ourselves into everyone's lives. About 200 people have viewed my profile on this blog since it started a year ago, so I am hardly intruding into too many people's lives given how many people are active on the internet at any one time.

You could say that blogs are not so much about celebrity as about immortality. You can guarantee that even if you die tomorrow, your ideas will be recorded somewhere for people to stumble across for years to come. This is what motivated me to get my novels out there as I knew otherwise no-one would ever see them again and even if one person enjoys reading them or has thoughts stimulated by them, then that will be a gain for the world.

Of course the blogs that are run by families are very much like this, repositories for the life of a person/people. I have not seen anything about bloggers who have died, but I imagine there is something nice about having a blog to go and see Grandpa's/Grandma's thoughts especially in an age when we do not write letters to each other and photographs often are not even downloaded from the digital camera. We are in an incredibly ephemeral age which could easily be eliminated with an EMP blast in your neighbourhood. Of course, as with letters the condemnation of the departed may hang over you, but turning away from blogs is not a way to deal with that, it is just we have to learn new habits for the new facilities. Whilst pictures feature a great deal in blogs, at their base are words and I feel they are important for helping sustaining a literate culture.

I think ultimately blogs are not self-serving. They do certainly benefit the blogger, but in return for a lot of work being put in. I think they are vital as they expose millions of fragments of culture across the world. When searching for ideas and facts and opinions I come across so much on blogs which intrigues, entertains or infuriates me and that in turn stimulates my own thoughts. Society is about interchange of ideas and discussion. I know that in many parts of the globe such things are dismissed as unnecessary and I am not even thinking about the dictatorial states, but I think it is an element of what makes us human. So, blog on, you may be benefiting yourself, but you are also adding many pieces to the mosaic of humans on this planet.

P.P. Talking about my blog with a friend of mine who works in the media, he asked me how many subscribers I had to it and I said none. Consequently he dismissed it as a waste of time as clearly nothing that I said impacted on the 'media-sphere'. No wonder bloggers get a reputation for being self-serving if that is seen as the measure of the 'success' of a blog. Of course, that is not the criteria I use to judge mine.

Blogging the Blog 5: My 200th Posting

Well, eleven months have passed since I started blogging and here I am having reached my 200th posting. In the early days I did not think I would make it past the typical 3 months duration of a blog and I still find each month starting with me fearing that I will have nothing to say. I suppose the reason why I am still hear is because this blog has straddled so many different facets of blogging. It is a scrapbook for the things that interest me primarily counter-factual history discussion, maps of imaginary places and occasionally my own fiction. It is also a journal blog in that it charts my highs and lows, though despite feeling pretty suicidal in the first three months of this year, 2008 is turning out to be a lot less unpleasant than 2007 did though I can see repossession of my house coming in the future so more of me whining about the British housing market may be on the cards for 2009. This blog is also an anger management blog and I think that is what gives it vibrancy. The scrapbook items take time to assemble and write, but the anger management aspects come right out very quick and there is a lot to be angry about, not just with what China is up to and how the rest of the world is simply letting it get on with it, but the erosion of civil liberties in the UK and of course always the pig-headedness of so many British people whenever I encounter them in the car or broadcasting.

The title of my blog came from my wish to get things out of my mind and cast them away, in the way Ancient Romans did with curses (though when I went to Bath I found they used pewter as much as lead, but given that their pipes were made of lead I imagine there was a lot of it around to use in the same way, so I have stuck with lead) and I must say it has been incredibly successful in that. There have been loads of things that have irritated or interested me that I have been carrying around in my head for decades now and telling people about them whenever I can (often to the annoyance of friends, particularly women who seem far less tolerant to hearing the same point raised more than once than men are). This blog has proven to be the perfect vessel for putting them in as I can die a happy man knowing that all those things I wanted to get across to people are at least out there in the public domain and people can read them or ignore them as they choose, but at least they have been said.

So, this blog is a kind of download of me and all the clutter in my head. I really have no interest if anyone else is interested in what I say, though I know there are people out there who share my interests. Even if I stopped blogging tomorrow, I would have gained a great deal from this, it has really helped me to get my frustrations out in a non-shouting, non-violent way probably all to the better for myself and the people who live around me. Blogging allows that iota of revenge on the morons you encounter on the daily basis, it is like sounding your car horn when you are cut up by some idiotic driver, but it is a hooting that goes on and on and people can come along and listen to and agree or disagree. No matter what they feel about it the sound goes on and that is incredibly satisfying to the blogger and so, in turn, actually very therapeutic. I have no desire to stop blogging, in fact there are a couple of things I want to get on now. Will I have enough to last another 200 postings, well, we will have to see...

Blogging the Blog

Well, I have reached my third month of blogging. The title of this post was prompted by a children's programme of the 1970s called 'Noggin the Nog' which was about a King Noggin of a people called the Nogs, who appeared pretty much like 11th century Normans. In contrast to many children's programmes of that period which have been revived on DVD this one seems to have missed out.

Anyway, what is the significance of the third month of blogging? Well apparently that is how long the bulk of blogs last. In the way that it is said that everyone has 'one book inside them' you could add these days 'and three months of blogging'. Why is this the case? I think it is because blogs fall into three categories. The largest one, is the type that I initially set out to produce here: a tool for anger management. In this world in which it is difficult to get your voice heard even when dealing with companies and utility suppliers who you are paying large sums of money, let alone in terms of the political scene, many people feel immense frustration. We live in an age when anger is a normal part of behaviour and in some ways is a lightning rod to conduct away our sense of powerlessness in the huge and pretty oppressive world. However, certainly in the UK, with on-the-spot fines and ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) becoming so common, it is difficult to express than anger in public. In contrast the internet is kind of 'public' but without that kind of policing. You see anger come out on discussion boards, but even there, there are moderators and other contributors who restrain anger. On a blog generally you are the ruler, you decide what is appropriate. On that tack, I am intrigued by the number of blogs you come across with pornographic material on. They do not have bars the way pornographic websites do. Blogging, at present is incredibly free. So, the prime reason why I started this blog, as my first posting shows, is because of my anger and frustration: at the Blair government, at harrasment from my landlord, at the difficulties of getting a house in the UK, the dangerous way people drive, the end of my relationship and bullying at work. I was unable to do anything about any of these things, so I could blog my anger. I must say it has worked successfully and I guess that is the same for the other 3-month bloggers. You can get all of your anger out in 3 months of blogging and even if new problems arise you have stated your view of the world and what is wrong with it and that is applicable to the new problems. So the blog has served its purpose. It may also introduce you to people across the world who are encountering similar things and a problem shared is one halved. Blogs are a useful tool as they must have saved at least some people from counselling. They do not cost money and you can self-prescribe.

Now, of course many blogs last longer than 3 months. Why? Well, in my view it is because of their nature. This is probably why my blog will continue now I am passed my anger management phase as it is morphing into a different type of blog. I see two other types of blog: the journal and the scrapbook. The journal is probably closest to the original conception of what a blog was about from its full title 'weblog', i.e. like a captain's log on board a ship of any noteworthy events. This is the kind of blog you tend to see on commercial sites recording some trip or exercise that the TV presenters or some celebrity is going through. These things often have a finite life because once the trip or experience is over the blog is over. However, I find that such people then set off on another trip and so revive their blog. Thus, whilst the life of the blog may be erratic it does live on. I do find such blogs very intimidating. The ones in which people log their terminal illness are incredibly painful; those in which people outline their adventures or their court battles or whatever make me feel inadequate as I know I will never experience such things or if I did would be utterly unable to cope with them. Both kinds of blog can be found on this host. You can sit looking at the opening screen and see them flick past and then dive into one or two. As I have said before I am always astounded how blogs on so many subjects and in so many languages sit 'side-by-side' on the system. This kind of journal blogging harks back to earlier eras, these people are the inheritors of Samuel Pepys and Victorian explorers and hopefully not of Anne Frank, but certainly of ages past when keeping a journal was a vital exercise and for historians has provided a wealth of material about real lives and experiences from those times. I can easily see research in the coming years, drawing on blogs to get a rich slice of life in the 2000s. I have kept a diary every day since the year I turned 11, but this blog, with its focuse on the pressures I am facing and my analysis of them, is now providing a supplemental to that written journal. (Un)fortunately my life has not been that exciting so I doubt the world will be too interested in my life in the future. However, with my memory failing rapidly, it allows me to keep touch with my own experience. That is important.

The other form of blog which is equally common is the scrapbook. This often overlaps with the journal as family blogs often outline the adventures that the family has been on and yet also includes photos and other scrapbook elements. Similarly blogs about bands will have the journal of tours and performances inter-cut with images and other elements. However, there is also the scrapbook of the collector. I came across one on this blog in which the blogger listed recipes relating to dates (i.e. the fruit not the calendar dates). My blog has become like that as I 'paste in' things about alternate history. As with all blogging there is a sense of self-importance in the scrapbook type of blog. It is, however, that what you find interesting must interest others and I guess that that is a legitimate thought. In a world of billions of people, you can probably guarantee that there is someone else out there who shares your interest. Over the weekend I read about a website for people fascinated by hiccoughs/hiccups, not my cup of tea as the British say, but for those people who are interested it must be a wonderful source.

For authors internet blogs are so useful. Whereas it would have taken hours or days to find out names of people in a certain country and the habits they follow, these days you can quickly pick up authentic voices that provide depth to your writing. I read a book in the 1990s which was one of hundreds advising you how to write a book. However, it said that with the complexity of the modern world amateurs should not bother writing fiction because they could not get the facts right and this would undermine their books and mean no-one would be interested in them. Of course this is rubbish, great authors have made errors, look at Ian Fleming, he even blundered on things like pistols which made up a central element of his novels. In addition, people can always start writing about what they know before adventuring further afield, especially these days in which 'life writing' (of which blogging is clearly an element) is so popular. However, that book could certainly not be written nowadays when we can access so much about the world and its details without leaving our chair.

So, blogs have a range of functions and they add to the richness of the world the internet has opened up for us. Their key benefit is to the people who write them, but that does not mean others cannot derive use from them as well. My blog seems now to be straddling the different genres, with me blogging the ongoing pressures of work and accommodation like a journal and then using it as a scrapbook for alternate history discussions. I cannot say if I will be here in 5 years time, but certainly I see myself running beyond the 3-month milestone.

P.P. 01/02/2010: The complete 'Noggin the Nog' became available to buy on DVD in 2009.