Special Post

Blog Reflections

Churches request, financial planners plead, and the media unceasingly demand that we think about what happened in the previous year as we prepare to decorate our homes with the new pictures on the wall that will accompany the passage of the next twelve months. In response to the dictates of the season, then, I offer these thoughts on my experience writing this blog for the past year.

I expected some angst poring over the keyboard on a regular basis, ostensibly donating to the public record, but three unwelcome surprises stand out: creating the posts was NOT easy, it wasn’t much fun, and the locals were under-represented in the reader statistics.


First - Blog Software Stinks!

This lesson [in theory, learned early on] whacked me over the head every time I tried to ensure that the visual aspects of the postings were as meaningful as the text. I’ve finally decided composing has to be done on word processing software - with the result printed, then copied into the blogspot composing window, since it takes far too long to go back and forth between the preview screen and the composing window to make sure that spelling and grammar are correct, line spacings are what was intended, highlighting is in the right places, and the type sizes give prominence to headings and subordinate status to photo captions.

Notwithstanding the headaches it caused, the software wasn’t nearly as annoying as the age-old phenomenon we call ‘writer’s block’: the best of intentions, material that Hollywood hacks would drool over, and oodles of available time still had to battle with the frequent inability to just sit down and type. Summer was difficult because I travelled every weekend for four-and-a-half months, and December was a total loss [the big “0” last month means I’m obliged to compensate by pummelling readers with at least six posts this month]. Still, I did succeed in creating 41 posts last year - most of them much longer, and way more time-consuming, than was originally intended.


And where’s the fun?

I never thought that blogging would be “FUN!” fun [like winning the $1000 from OrangeCrush/MuchMusic in an online contest in September], but I had hoped that the half-dozen bursts of genuine laughter that escaped my mouth as I carefully composed over two hundred pages of material would not be such isolated events. Trying to be fair to people helps explain why the phrases I created weren’t that humourous [even though much of what I write about falls into the I-can’t-believe-he-said(did)-that! category of pure nonsense], as does the need to avoid libel litigation. Deriving pleasure from writing tends to come from other people relating their experience with the text, but this shouldn’t preclude solitary chuckling [of the sane and sober variety] when the words and images are strung together. I’m not asking to be entertained by every second sentence, or to successfully mimic The Colbert Report, I just want to write something that keeps my eyelids separated until my eyes get to the end of it. Remember that the problem exists because city council meetings do get painfully boring [which is why I’m altering the blog format, to include only the 'noteworthy' items].


Local Readers: 140-character maximum?

It truly amazes me that less than 30% of the hits on the blog come from computers in Prince Albert [and almost 20% come from the United States. . . .] Granted, my family, friends, former colleagues, and acquaintances [plus people I just want to irritate] are spread out across the Americas and Europe, but I thought larger numbers of PA residents would show an interest in knowing more about this city’s politics and the farcical decision-making that dominates council meetings - especially since this was an election year, and my campaign literature [delivered to over 1600 Prince Albert residences and businesses] made multiple references to this blog.

While the blog’s content is accurately portrayed by the title at the top of each web page, you don’t have to look hard to see that it has subtexts to its subtexts; direct and oblique allusions to popular culture and historical events; diverse literary and academic references; and photographs that have been painstakingly composed and edited. This should [and does] make the blog appealing to a wider audience than if it presented dumbed-down, lowest-common-denominator quotidian drivel in one size of black ink. On the other hand, perhaps the limited local readership means there’s an issue with short attention spans that I’ve failed to adequately address. In any case, this possibility will not affect the blog’s future content. Look for more interesting, spicier stuff here in 2010.