Blue Birds and a Mastodon Talking

Blogging for Three Hundred and Sixty Six Days in a Row

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

For three hundred and sixty six days I have written a blog post daily. In some cases I wrote two posts, and scheduled the post to appear the next day. This is when I was driving for thirteen hours, or if I knew that my morning was busy. In the process I have definitely given myself a writing habit. The question I ask myself now is whether to continue, or whether to change the posting frequency.

Nothing to Say

One of the problems with posting daily is that we sometimes have nothing to say. We sit at the computer and try to find inspiration for an hour, or two, or even three. Eventually we write but is there any value in what we wrote? According to the viewer stats there isn’t. It’s a matter of just writing, for the sake of habit, and experience. It also demonstrates that I have the stamina to write every single day, even if some days are more interesting than others.

Reducing the Frequency

I’m thinking about reducing my writing frequency to once every two days, or once per week. If I write once per week then I might be as uninspired when I write daily, but weekly. In effect I’d be lazier, less disciplined, than I am at the moment. I don’t think that reducing the frequency of writing would be productive, because that would be about laziness, rather than striving.

Consistency

Writing daily, despite having nothing to say is about consistency. A toddler falls up to several hundred times in a single day when learning to walk. An adult walks 23,000 steps without even noticing, in a single day, when hiking. Writing daily might generate a lot of crap, but it also trains us to write, to type, to think, to go back and edit. It trains us to put ideas into writing. We learn to write every single day.

More Productive than Social Media

One of the reasons I decided to blog daily, is that I saw that Facebook and Instagram were making money from the time I spent on their sites and I thought “I should invest that time into my own site”. I did. That’s why I now blog daily, and I’ve had the habit for three hundred and sixty six days in a row. I do feel like changing the rules for myself.

Photographs and Video

At the moment I post written blog posts, but now that I have written blog posts for three hundred and sixty six days I could change it up. On some das I could post a video, and on others I could post photographs. The point of a photograph is that I could spend 30 seconds on a blog post, rather than one to three hours per day. I proved that I could write daily for an entire year. Now I can reward myself, by changing the rules.

The Road that Became a River

Two days ago I ran by a road that became a river, and I should have stopped to take photos or video. If I had then I could show just how heavy the rain had been, over a period of hours and days. High winds are forecast overnight. It could be fun to capture the waves crashing on shore. If the temperature dropped then it could be fun to capture the ice formation.

And Finally

With the change in format I hope to spend less time on blogging. I want to continue blogging but I want to give myself to post an image, rather than write. Writing takes time.

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To Blog Or To Newsletter, That Is The Question

To Blog Or To Newsletter, That Is The Question

Byrichard

With the sudden growth of audiences for newsletter writers on sub stacks as they start to use Notes so the question emerges on whether to dump blogging, for news lettering. In theory by news lettering on Substack we grow an audience that is pre-packaged and ready to go. 


The drawback is that there are two types of content makers. Those that want their readers to read everything they write, and to pay them for the obligation to read what they write and the bloggers. 


The point of blogging is never to get millions of views, or even thousands. The idea of blogging is to share ideas, adventures and thoughts on products, books and more. The idea of blogging is of writing about something that no may not be read for weeks, months or even years. The idea is to allow people to find what they were looking for organically, through search, discussion, or simple browsing. 


The problem with newsletters, and email based articles, is that we have to “read” the message but instead we skim. We don’t read e-mails when they arrive, we read skim them, or just mark them as read, to make them vanish. I don’t like newsletters because they become backlogged in our mailboxes. They stagnate for days, weeks or even months, and they’re a ToDo because they’re marked as unread. 


The beauty of blogs is that you visit the blog, you find the headlines that interest you, and then you read. There is no To Do. There is no expectation. 


At the moment my blog is especially “noisy” because I am trying to write every single day, so there is a lot of worthless writing. If we were in normal times then I would be blogging about rock climbing, via ferrata, hiking and cycling. Instead I am writing about hiking in circles, random ideas, and cycling. In normal times my blog isin a focused niche. 


Aside from anything else I feel that by using Substack rather than WordPress or other blogging platforms, we are making more money for someone else, than we are making for ourselves. People develop a platform, get people to engage and then say “look at us, we helped writers make millions”.  


with Substack, Twitter, and other platforms we are creating content that someone else is monetising. Although we might get a percentage they benefit more than we do. 


I write for pleasure, and for experience. I like to browse. 


And finally


I could continue writing about this for hours but at the end of the day it boils down to something very simple. There are two types of content makers. Those that want to be industrially farmed like chickens and cattle, in industrial farms like Substack, YouTube and others, and free range bloggers, who like to be “outdoors, scratching a living, digging niches(nid-de-poules) 😉 and resting under trees.
Are you a free range blogger, or an industrially farmed blogger?” 😉

An Easier Run
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An Easier Run

Byrichard

Since the start of the year I have been running regularly. Yesterday I went for a run and I found it easiser than other runs. It might be thanks to the audiobook, on the one hand, and to consistent training on the other. I am not pushing hard. The training program is a 5k programme over twelve weeks. I don’t need twelve weeks for this. I was a runner before. I don’t care about beating distance records or other things.


My primary goal is not to write “I didn’t feel my shin splints today” or “This run really hurt”. I want to run, without pushing my body to breaking point. I also want to run and feel comfortable. I want to allow my body the time to adapt to the sport, rather than pushing too far, too fast. If and when I can run five kilometres comfortably my one hour walks will take half an hour and my one and a half hour walks could take fourty five minutes. It’s not that I don’t like my long walks. It’s that I want to feel that my fitness is improving rather than stagnating.


Lifehacker currently has an article about “walk score and quality of life. I don’t like that there are so many roads with people who show apathy to cyclists and people walking by the side of the road. I walk into fields and I get thanked. I don’t walk into the fields out of curiousity. I walk into the fields out of fear and fatigue of cars skimming by me too fast. That’s part of what motivates me to run. Running is a sport where you can easily get away from cars.


I don’t need to take the car to go for a run, and I don’t need to buy anything extra for the scooter or car, if I want to run elsewhere. Although everything seems to indicate that the pandemic is over I am not convinced, so I prefer to run outdoors, away from people, to be safe. I value my health, and I enjoy walking and running locally. The pandemic has shaped how I think of sports, and which sports I would consider doing.

Finding time for Long-Form Writing and Other Pursuits.
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Finding time for Long-Form Writing and Other Pursuits.

Byrichard

Finding time for Long Form Writing

This morning I read twenty percent of a book whilst sitting in the car waiting for shops to open. In the process I occasionally looked up to see private jets and airlines fly over me. A few years ago in the same situation I would have been staring at my phone. I would have been refreshing twitter and Facebook looking for conversations. These days social media marketers and others are using social media as if they were Really Simple Syndication feeds, RSS. The problem with RSS feeds is that there a low signal to noise ratio. You need to skip hundreds of pieces of content for one or two worthwhile posts.

Highest Return on Investment for Social Media

When I finished university in London I had an extremely high return on investment for the time spent with twitter, Facebook and social networks. I was invited to events, to alpha projects and establishing friendships that last to this day. When I left London Facebook and twitter were still sticky because I was able to keep in contact with friends in a diversity of geographic locations. We’re the easyjet generation after all.

Flooded with content rather than Conversation

For several months now I have been spending less and less time with social media, not because my desire to socialise has gone down but because the success rate has suffered. News organisations, celebrities, personalities and brands are flooding social media with content rather than conversation. Facebook and Twitter have algorithms to make sure that brand and paid for content is seen a dozen times. A consequence is that we don’t see conversations. Not seeing conversations negates the purpose of social media.

Back to Passive pass-times.

Without conversations on social media we can go back to reading books, playing computer games, watching television series, blogging and more. The reason we came to social media was to socialise. The reason we cut down on social media is that like the bars, pubs and playgrounds of our childhood people have moved on. Some are in their marriage bubble, others are focused on their career and yet more are enjoying sports.

This year I will try to finish at least one book every two weeks. I will try to go on multi-day hikes every single weekend and more. We can also go back to reading and writing blog posts.

A missed opportunity.

When I was in London and we were living the golden age of social media I almost started to believe that social media adoption rates were increasing so much that they would be a great way to meet people who lived within walking or driving distance. For a moment being an online introvert was fruitious. over time of course engagement decayed and social media stopped being a practical place for introverts to meet up. Commercialism turned social media into the same competition as the Physical world.

 

 

Blogging One Hundred And Fifty-Two Days In A Row

Blogging One Hundred And Fifty-Two Days In A Row

Byrichard

Blogging one hundred and fifty-two days in a row is an interesting challenge. It encourages you to think of something daily, for months in a row. It also forces you to have the discipline to sit and attempt to write for one or two hours a day, whether inspiration is there or not. Often it isn’t. Add to this that most blog posts get zero views and you have a reason to stop and give up.


You don’t. One of the reasons to write a blog post a day is to train yourself to be disciplined, like with studying a new language, or a new skill. You sit down, you procrastinate, you look for ideas and inspirations. You start to write, and eventually, you’re left with a blog post.


Writing, video editing, web development, camera work, climbing, and plenty of things take consistent practice to improve. It is only by constant practice that we improve our skills, or get into bad habits, whichever comes first. Initially, I wanted to try journalling and I tried a few apps but eventually, I got tired of writing, what I felt was, useless drivel.


By writing a blog post I made the challenge harder because whatever I write can be read. Luckily, when you’re learning, people latch onto individual works, rather than the entire blog. I can get away with most of the writing being uninteresting. The challenge is to improve my writing and to find something more inspiring to write about. I need to find something that is niche enough for me to be one of the few writers, but broad enough to attract an audience.


An article about Genre theory did that, another about Suunto and climbing, and other articles had that unique relevance to attract readers. These articles are rare, because it is hard to write something unique during a pandemic when we are still self-isolating.


If and when the pandemic ends, and if I am still not too old to do things, then these blog posts will become interesting again, and I will have more writing practice. For now I am trying to find inspiration during pandemic self-isolation where from Monday to Sunday and from January to December nothing changes.


Writing a blog post a day forces me to have a spontaneous conversation with you, despite no conversations taking place in person for days, or even weeks in a row. Being single and solitary, during a pandemic, is a unique experience, that those that we hear, do not understand. If they did understand this they would do everything they could to get back to COVID-zero. I would then have no reason to write blog posts. I would be socialising, rather than self-isolating.


So what have I learned after 152 days of blogging? That the pandemic allows us to pick up habits that we would lose interest in if we were in a normal cycle of life. I still like to blog, and to read blogs. I am going to keep this habit up for as long as possible. I look forward to when we will be living more interesting lives, once the pandemic is over.

The Daily Walk – 100 Days of Consecutive Blogging.

The Daily Walk – 100 Days of Consecutive Blogging.

Byrichard

We walk daily to look into the distance, to have fresh air, and to think about things. We take our daily walk because it’s a habit. We take our daily walk because it is a way of travelling from one place to another, without necessarily changing location.


A flower, with a field, and the Alps behind it.


Today is day 100 of writing a blog post every day. Every day I have tried to find inspiration to write and every day I have succeeded. The posts go unread, but the challenge is not to be read. The challenge is to be consistent. I have managed that challenge.


We are in a pandemic so I do not travel to via ferrata, hikes in the mountains or activities. There are no conferences, so I do not go to large events. My ideas and inspiration come from what I read, see, hear or feel. As we meet very few people we also converse less. Ideas are harder to share and discuss.


I question whether, when the pandemic is over, I will have the motivation to try to resume a social life. At the moment, because we’re in a pandemic, I feel that the answer is, “definitely not.” This is a self defense mechanism, and a way of commenting on the one and a half years of pandemic.


We have to be solitary to cope with pandemic solitude, but we also have to be that way inclined to be in that situation.


See you tomorrow.


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Playing with Vim and Laravel

Byrichard

I love using Atom because it’s light and fast, even on a six year old machine like mine. Github is soon going to archive atom. I will lose my favourite editor. That’s why I played with VS Code, Sublime Text and other solutions. Vim is the winner for now.


Vim is on every linux and mac machine, and can be installed on Windows. Out of the box Vim is a really simple, limited editor but if you invest the time, to find plugins, and learn how to use it then it becomes a great application.


This weekend in the process of studying Laravel I decided to use VIM and one of the best features with Vim is that when you’re following a tutorial you will get the file path given to you. Type it into terminal and you’re in the file. No scrolling through hierarchies, no reading through long lists. You go straight to the file and start working.


This is good for production websites too. I am currently in the process of taking the static content on my website and making it dynamic. This requires going to the section index page, seeing a file name and opening it. With vim I see that I want tricycle.html and I type it, and the file is open. This saves a great amount of time.


Vim can feel really slow when you train yourself to use i to insert, esc :wq to save and more, but once these are natural reflexes using Vim speeds up. I find that the more I use it, and the more comfortable I am with simple things, the more willing I am to experiment with additional features, for example option 8 and nine to jump by paragraphs to go up and down documents.


One of the biggest mental hurdles is remembering to work without a mouse, like we did in the eighties. Everything is via the keyboard so you don’t click and drag. You yank and put. You also shift V to select a line and jk up or down to select more lines. You can then delete.


I am not comfortable with cut and pasting yet but that will come with time. Vim is an excellent piece of software, but you need to invest time in learning how to use it.


I like that it’s free, available on almost all machines automatically, and that it’s resource light. There is no need to have a heavy application like Visual Studio Code running, if you learn Vim.

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