Today is the 1000th day since I started blogging. Which is a bit of an achievement (although looked at another way it's just another number, and a number that sounds a lot better than "2 years and nearly 9 months"). Most impressively, to me anyway, is that I've managed to post at least something on 982 of those 1000 days. I was a little slipshod back in the very early weeks, and I missed a few days in 2003 while staying away from home, but for the last 2 years I've posted something every single day (bar my usual short Christmas break). It's not healthy, is it?
There are two kinds of blogger - those who post regularly and those who don't. Which are you? • Those who don't post regularly walk around thinking "Ooh this is interesting, I wonder if I can blog about it?" It's a sensible attitude, not inflicting your thoughts on the general public unless you think there's something worth saying, although it can lead to very long gaps between posts or even, in more extreme cases, the legendary 'blog hiatus'. • Those who do post regularly walk around thinking "What am I going to blog about next?", which puts a rather different complexion on things. Some end up posting about the dull minutiae of their life just for the sake of it, while others go out and do stuff just so that they can write about it. It's certainly not easy to keep up this blogging lark regularly without running out of steam, as many have found to their cost.
Me, I walk around asking the subtly different question "What am I going to blog about tomorrow?" This adds a whole new layer of pressure because missing a day is somehow an admission of defeat, and encourages the non-PC art of forward planning. For example, I spotted that Day 1000 was coming up about two months ago, made a note somewhere and then remembered to write this post about the milestone earlier in the week. Regent's Canal week was also carefully pre-meditated and pre-planned, more as a huge challenge to myself than in the hope that any of you might actually want to read it. But I'd hate you to think that the majority of this blog is clinically executed. I have absolutely no idea yet what I'm going to write about on Saturday, just that an idea will come and that I will post something on here that's hopefully worth reading. Maybe it'll be something I see, or something I read, or something daft that somebody says, but that inspiration will come. It's this constant series of daily deadlines that's egged me through the last thousand days of diamond geezer, and hopefully this creative energy will continue for many more days to come. Now, what am I going to blog about tomorrow...?
