It’s been a bit of time since the last time I wrote. I wish I could say that’s because I have other stuff in the works to be published, but in all honesty it’s simply because I’ve not bothered to write anything. So today, I thought I’d take a bit of a closer look into why that is, and what’s causing my particular form of writer’s block.
So the first thing to address is probably the purpose of this blog. The tagline is “Whatever caught my interest this week”, implying that it would just be my thoughts and opinions jotted down and published for the world to see. Unfortunately, that hasn’t quite turned out how I would want it to. My own form of perfectionism has meant that everything needs to be of a professional standard of writing, properly sourced, and considered. It’s why my posts take so long to come out. They’re not just whatever caught my interest any more; they’re ‘what will work best online’.
In other words, I’m awfully awkward when it comes to when and how I write
I suppose there is an interesting point to be made there, about how innately performative we are as humans. All it takes is the knowledge that someone might come across our work at some point for us to start planning far far ahead and considering worst case scenarios. I do now realise that I could be overgeneralising my experiences — oh well. 😂
I’ve considered ways to get around this issue of writing for an audience, rather than writing for me. I tried to imagine that rather than lecturing, I was talking to a friend about something that mattered to me. That seemed interesting, but when I sat down to write the ‘threat’ of other people always came back.
I even tried for a brief time using an audio transcriber to say what I’m thinking out loud, and have it written down for me, and then to work off that. The problem with that is I’m terribly self-conscious, so hearing my own voice and knowing I’m recording for other people just feels weird and not entirely comfortable to me.
It got so bad that for one post I never published, I wrote down my thoughts and sent it to a ML system to write a post based on it. That idea died pretty quickly, because at once I could tell it wasn’t my voice. That did tell me something interesting though: I can talk, or write, or otherwise convey information, when it’s to someone. Not at someone, shouting into the void of the internet, but to them, as though they are right there.
My main inspiration for this blog initially was Tom Scott. I love his ecclectic mix of topics ranging from anything to everything, and moreover the fact that he talks to the audience as though we’re in the room, sitting there listening to him. It feels refreshing and more honest, to not be bound by something specific. And to some extent I share that belief: the world is an amazing place full of amazing things. Without the liberty to travel around and see all those amazing things though, I can only ever give second hand accounts of them, which again adds to this stagnation — it doesn’t feel honest.
In other words, I’m awfully awkward when it comes to when and how I write, and it’s meant I’ve neglected this blog somewhat. But to my mind, the only way to overcome this is to simply get stuff out there. Who cares what anyone thinks — it’s not like I’ve enabled comments on this site! 😂
So this post is going to be published entirely unedited, entirely in my own voice, entirely with my own thoughts. Knowing my luck, I’ll probably end up being mocked out of the internet.
Thanks for listening to my deranged ramblings, I suppose.
— James Michael