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.

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.

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 4: The Case of Hu Jia

Previously in my thread 'Blogging the Blog', I mentioned how I had heard about Chinese people using blogs as a way to get the truth about what was going on in China out to other people both within and outside China. A particular example, Hu Jia, came to my attention this week and shows the risks that Chinese bloggers can face in producing blogs. Hu Jia used blogs including one he posted on daily, webcasting and online videos to focus on human rights abuses in China. He was arrested on 27th December 2007 and his wife, Zeng Jinyan and their 2-month old daughter have been placed under house arrest. Last year Jia and Jinyan were under house arrest for over 7 months. Chinese officials can deny him access to a lawyer and he can be held for up to 7 months before a trial is called (Mr. Brown, do we really want to start resembling China? Stop your plans to extend the period of detention without charge!). In theory Hu was not breaking laws by sending out information about China but clearly it is embarrassing to the government. The Foreign Ministry of China has told foreigners that they should keep out of China's human rights affairs and look to their own countries' behaviour instead. Such attitudes go back to what I have posted earlier about defending liberal humanism in an age of fundamentalism (which effectively the Maoist-Marxism pursued in China is a form of). There are certain baseline principles such as freedom of speech and civil liberties that everyone has the right to protest about no matter where they are challenged, whether in your own street or right across the world. Hu Jia is a hero of such liberal humanism.

In 1936 when Berlin was to host the Olympics, the German authorities released a number of political prisoners in the hope that it would calm criticism from journalists coming to the games. In contrast in 2008 when the Olympics are going to Beijing, the Chinese authorities seem set on showing up what kind of regime they run, to the full. Other dissidents such as Yang Chunlin and Liu Jie have also suffered in the current repression. I imagine my blog is now one of those China will block access too, but I am grateful that is the most they can do for me. Us residents of the blogging community should send our support to a fellow blogger punished for doing what we love and something that he has put to use for such a good cause.

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.