Where Have I Been?

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I’m back. Where have I been?

Overworking for the University, at first, then trying to do as few things as possible for awhile. Blogging got pushed away - grumbles about work and tiredness and stress wouldn’t be fun for anyone, and I try to keep my professional life away from here. The things I did and things I thought all became rather dull and inward, even by my standards. I developed a strange habit of starting to write blog posts and then leaving them as drafts until they lost all relevancy. Then I decided to start a huge project of my own, and that took up an awful lot of time.

And my online habits changed, too. When I started blogging I’d post links for myself as much as others, and turn observations and grumbles into posts. Now Pinboard.in silently absorbs my own bookmarks, Twitter streams away all my inane opinions and Flickr handles anything interesting I get up to out in the real world (although I’m getting rather behind there too, recently, for different reasons). Blogging has gone from an all-encompassing medium to something of a niche, one niche amongst many.

Hard though it may be to believe, I used to write and edit for a living. As my work gradually become more and more technical and I turned into a sysadmin, occasional blogging let me continue writing - casual and trivial and amateurish but still writing.

I’ve recently noticed that I can’t write easily anymore - I can’t hold the structure in my head, or maintain a flow, or even make sense. It might be age but I suspect it’s just a lack of practice.

So I’ll have a go at writing here more often. It probably won’t be anything worth reading but it might be worth writing, just so I don’t forget how.