A Lament for a Lost Post

Well, I missed another blog post last week: only the seventh one since I started this blog almost five years ago.  So, more than one a year, but not so many as two per.  (The exact statistic is 7 out of 250 weeks, or 2.8%, for those with a more pedantic turn of mind.)  I suppose that’s not so bad.

The reason, such as it was, was simply the holidays ... last Sunday fell 3 days after Christmas, which of course is 3 days before New Year’s Eve.  There was still a lot going on, and I’m guessing I was playing Little Big Planet, in its latest incarnation with my boys.  That’s quite a common post-holiday pasttime currently.

I thought it might be interesting to go back and review those 7 occasions when I missed posts.  Here they are:

• On 6/27/10, I was in the middle of a two-week vacation and apparently just spaced.
• On 11/28/10, I was in the midst of moving into our new (current) house, and everything was in flux.  I can probably be forgiven for that one.
• On 6/26/11, 6/2/13, and 6/22/14, I was traveling to or from a YAPC.  For some reason, I have a tendency to miss a week around my yearly Perl conferences.  Less excusable, but not entirely feeble, hopefully.
• On 7/24/11, I missed a post for no reason that I can determine. 
• And 12/28/14 was last week.

Of course, all this virtual hand-wringing over missed blog posts presumes that anyone cares, and, as I am constantly reminding you, you, dear reader, should not.  Because you should not even be reading this blog.  Nonetheless, I’ve tried to maintain a consistent schedule, and, when I miss a week, I upset that schedule.  And it tends to bother me.  Perhaps it might be appropriate at this juncture to ponder exactly what my goals are for the blog itself.

The blog was originally a suggestion from The Mother.  She pointed out that I was an aspiring writer who never wrote anything, as well as a technogeek, for whom theoretically at least the creation of a blog would be much easier than it would for most of the rest of the populace.  I had no excuse, she pointed out, for not creating a blog and writing a post a week.  I resisted this at first, of course, given my staunch opinion on blogs in general.  But eventually I gave in and agreed to make the commitment.

And the commitment, once given, should be honored.

Of course, there’s still no particular penalty for missing a week.  But, the thing is, now that I’ve gotten into a rhythm, it’s an excellent way to keep me on track producing work.  Without the commitment, I’d probably just spit out a few thousand words every 9 months or so, instead of a moderately steady 1500 words a week.  Oh, sure, even when I don’t skip a week, I often produce an anemic, underfed post (such as this one), which I mark as “interstitial,” and which doesn’t come close to the 1500-word mark.  But, even so, I’m still writing something ... and I find that’s often sufficient.

So I’ll apologize for another missed week, even as I tell you that you really shouldn’t care.  And I’ll tell you once again to tune in next week for another blog post that you really shouldn’t read.  Because it’s become something of a habit.  A good habit, I think.