Inspiration and Privacy

One of the things that drives this blog is a direct pipeline from my day to day experience. Part of what has made scheduling blog posts in advance with a full plan such a great thing for me is that it means that if I have a single incident on one day, that inspires me to write something, that written work isn’t going to happen for weeks or in some times, months, meaning that I get to write about topics over the whole year, then they’ll come together in a particular period, looking like a coherent theme was sought out ahead of time.

It’s neat!

Here’s another thing, though: If I have a schedule it means that, by default, any immediate need to say something can be put on a page, and left alone for two weeks. It gives my thoughts time to breathe, and this becomes very important when I’m talking about things that upset me ore things that I find myself extremely excited about. I have deliberately slowed myself down so I don’t have to be the Hot Take Time Machine, and that means that my opinions don’t get the benefit of riding the Attention Cycle, but they also don’t have me locked into fast, quick impressions of things where I look like a dumbass a year later.

There’s this joke that pretty much all blogs start the same way with this dickbrain, who is a dickbrain, but in this case, the dickbrain is me, and the blog scheduling tool lets me keep a reign on my own dickbrainness.

This means that blogging periods are sometimes symptoms of what was inspiring me a month ago. You’ll see trends and streaks, if you can divine the tea leaves of my me-ness. Complicating this, though, is what my life is doing.

As I write this, I’m coming off a period where some of the things that normally fizz my brain and stimulate my writing aren’t happening. I don’t just mean isolation, though! I mean that normally, university semester means travel, reading, listening and looking at things around the place. What I’ve been left with instead is time spent on private projects – things that involve people who didn’t sign up to become part of my #internet #content #machine.

What follows then for me is a challenge of divining where I can draw a line between what was on my mind and what will seem was on my mind later. What I can’t share, and what I shouldn’t share, and what subjects can be said to be brought up by people in private spaces that aren’t necessarily going to be seen as big ole subtweets.

This is part of the path of managing this kind of writing: it matters enormously to me that if I’m writing something, it’s because it’s something I want to write and because it’s something I think you, the audience, will want to read.

There you go, some process stuff! How it all comes together! As of writing this, back in June, I have already a chunk of writing planning for later months done, some actual articles – and some things that are slowly brewing as I consider if it’s worth going into the topic, or holding back for another time.