Keeping the pump primed – September

Well, I haven’t been feeling very inspired about my Blog for a few weeks now. And when I talk about ‘inspiration’ its partly to do, I think, with who I feel I am writing it for, and not just what I am writing.

In many ways, this Blog is for myself. When you put things online, people tend to ‘Like’ what you do, say nice things and encourage you, and occasionally posit a different opinion. But all of that is perhaps the least important aspect of Blogging for me. In fact, it’s kind of a diversion from the point and somehow ‘caps’ the possibilities and potential of the Blog and of my writing.

I suppose what I mean by that is that, there is no point in Blogging or writing if you are not doing something that feels special or exceptional (yes that’s the right word) in some way. So, when it gets reduced to a humdrum activity it loses its spirit or ‘inspiration’.

Then again, everything online becomes humdrum. Most comments are hurried and cursory. Nevertheless, I have had inspired times while Blogging, and at those times felt that the feedback I received was heartfelt and not dutiful and polite. It’s also true that, over the nearly 20 years now I’ve hosted various Blogs, there have been times when I have stopped the Blog, sometimes for a year or several years. Recently it’s been feeing like its dwindling, and here I am just trying to locate the cause.

Writing and Blogging can be ‘inspired’ and ‘exceptional’ in many ways, and just one of those ways is via candour. We might be exceptionally candid and self-reflexive about our writing our Blog. Then again, it can be inspired or exceptional in the surprising nature of its content – the thoughts that are driving it and the way they are transmitted. Perhaps then it is at its best.

There’s also good reasons to keep writing and Blogging even when uninspired and unexceptional. For me it’s always been a way of making sure I let off a little of the steam of ideas that fills my head every day and every week, whether I am writing, at the same time, more substantial pieces or not.

There’s always been a kind of backlog of ideas in my head, just as there’s a big backlog of potentially pubishable essays and books here in my archive. So, just knowing you’ve put even a few simple words ‘out there’ each week somehow stops that backlog becoming so much of a concern.

I also think of the Blog as a kind of pump-primer, that means I have never stopped writing and won’t get ‘blocked’ as a result. The Blog is just a thin trickle of continuity which means I don’t ever feel I have ‘stopped’ writing and need to ‘start-up’ again.

Now, there are lots of other, perhaps more interesting things I wanted to write about today, and things perhaps that a reader might find more engaging than this rather self-reflexive post. One of those things is ‘September’, my favourite month perhaps. I have so many beautiful memories of Septembers, the month when art schools (would, traditionally) start up again (and I can’t think of anything more exciting than that), and the month when I used to take holidays with my mother in Cornwall. September is a month when ‘summer is over’ and yet we, in the UK, invariably enjoy some beautifully bright still relatively long days lightly cooled by hints of autumn air; as we quietly relish hours that we savour all the more for the fact that we know that autumn and winter’s hard work and short dark days will soon be upon us again.

I could and probably should have written much more about ‘September’, and maybe next week I will. For now, this will have to suffice. As you can see, we’re going through a difficult patch.

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