I've been writing here since February 2009. The earliest stuff was taken down in 2018, as it didn't cover the subjects that most concerned me from 2015, when my income increased, my social life took off, and I simply did more.
And yet by 2015 the blog's heyday was already over. I kept it going because I liked to write. But my photography (a particular interest of mine since 1965) took precedence. It was my dominant leisure activity. I built my holidays around seeing places and taking pictures. And in between those holidays I always had a camera to hand. No day passed without a crop of shots to deal with. By the end of 2022 I was taking more than 20,000 pictures a year. The time needed to process all those shots ate into my waking hours. It was - and remains - a labour of love, but photography has increasingly crowded out blogging. Nowadays publishing something here is very much a secondary activity.
So what is the future of this blog? I still want to write, and apparently I still have readers. Besides, the blog is a place (Flickr is the other) to showcase the pictures I take. I'll keep it going, but won't feel compelled to write often. Certainly not to meet some personal writing target, whether it's the number of posts per month, or how many words for each post, or whatever. It's not as if I'm paid to churn out posts. Thank goodness I have never monetised my blog, nor accepted sponsorship in any form.
I'm sure it wouldn't matter two hoots if I just stopped altogether, and took the blog down. But I know that I would still feel the need to write about the things I do or see, or affect me, at least occasionally, and this is a ready-made platform. So I'll keep the thing going.
I maintain an ever-updated list of subjects I can write about, which I consider daily, though often without taking any action. I have to be in the mood, and not minded to get on with anything else. Putting a post together takes at least two hours if it's illustrated with pictures. At least an hour if it's all text. This is assuming that I have a good flow. Basically a morning gone, or an evening gone.
I'm becoming ever more aware than ever before that subjects need to be chosen with care, lest there is an unwelcome comeback. I well recall spats with counter-opinionated people way back, and want no more of it. Not that they can easily vent their displeasure here. I don't allow public comments, so there can be no public name-calling, vitriol-throwing or point-scoring. They can only send me a one-to-one email from my profile page, and that deprives them of an audience. Nor can they look me up on social media and fire verbal missiles at me, because I'm not on it. But adverse comment on the acts or attidude of a foreign regime might clearly hinder future travel to that country, if my words were picked up by that country's security staff.
I'm sure that any post about my personal adventures and concerns will be safe. Likewise posts about getting old, and the various impacts of climate change. But posts that are bound to trigger a poisonous reaction from the hidebound and touchy are not safe. And I think it would be silly of me, in these over-sensitive times, to have a poke at fanatics and extremists or anybody who might be able to do me direct harm.
On the other hand, why blog at all, unless one is going to provide an interesting read? So there's a balance to be struck between expressing a definite personal sentiment and fanning the flames of some controversial debate.
Of course, even if there are no readers, a blog can be a published personal diary of whatever caught one's attention and seemed worth taking a view on. So if all readership drops away, I will at least have maintained a public record that may outlast me - unless Google introduces rules on how frequently blog posts must be made, or begins to charge for server usage. Then I'll sign off tout suite.
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