# For someone who has blogged for so many years I find it strange now I find it hard to write every day. One might think that the sameness of days in this covid era might be a cause, not having sufficient variety in my daily routine to inspire the words, but it's always been the same. Covid is just the lastest excuse.
In the past I have had to force myself to write, even to the point of burn out, and trying to use a simple paper system to coax myself along failed within a few days.
I don't know why I find it so difficult or, for that matter, why it should bother me but I do and it does. It's just blogging after all, nothing major, not rocket science and nobody's life depends on it.
@colinwalker My own formulation would be, "Who cares?"
@colinwalker Is there anything left to say? I often scribble in my journal and think for a split second that I might publish it. Then I come to my senses and decide it’s already been said.
@paulcraig901 There's always something to say or, at least, a different way of saying it. It's just the internal debate of whether you should.
Over the past couple of years (why do Americans drop the "of" from that?) I've been getting increasingly "Marie Kondo" about the way the blog looks. The initial redesign in 2016 was to a more minimal one column look and, since then, I have eschewed various facets that traditionally make a blog a blog. From time to time I'll have a purge, noting to myself that there has been feature creep but there is a disparity between the public face of the site and what goes on in the background. I look at the site now, with the Daily view as default, and wonder where it could go from here. Beyond culling the actual Today view (with its full menu and links to previous days, thus making the blog truly ephemeral) I think I would need to start looking at that background activity. I'm rarely on micro.blog these days - using it mainly as a distribution and comment system - so have considered removing the RSS feed from my account there. Again. This would mean less engagement, relying on people subscribing to the feed directly. Then I think about removing support for webmentions as the replies from micro.blog form the bulk of any I receive. I don't send that many external webmentions and most of the sites I "like" in posts don't support indieweb technologies so how much would I be really be loosing out on? Then again, one of the main uses I have for webmentions is my "related posts" functionality which I would be unhappy to lose. And then I wonder what's behind all this? Why do I feel the constant need to change things, pare them down? Some of the things I've added have definitely been of the "because I can" variety, there for the sake of curiosity and to see if I could get them to work. But why the need to tinker? I'm reminded of a recent comment from Bix:
But, for whatever reason, I do. Thinking back to Stephen Pressfield's post yesterday maybe the changes are all a surrogate for what I haven't done, what I continue to not do. Maybe they are the manifestations of the pain and self-reproach from having this unlived life and unfulfilled potential. Very likely. Knowing this to be the case it befalls on me to do something about it and I believe a change in direction in the coming months will do just that, giving me a goal and some much needed additional purpose. I'm really looking forward to sharing. In the meantime I just have to get over myself, try to get on with what's important, focus rather than give in the distractions of that self-reproach. Easier said than done.
I've thought about this too much, too. https://jamesshelley.com/why-press-the-publish-button/
I remember that from before ;)