Top 10! Things Not to Do If One Wants to Post on a Blog

There are certain things that just have to bite the schedule sometimes. Like concert band rehearsal three weeks ago (I really was busy), like flossing one's teeth, like sleeping.

And maintaining the old personal blog started amongst much (much?) fanfare. I could offer a long and drawn out list of rational and reasonable excuses for not posting—no. I could humbly and graciously apologize (I humbly and graciously apologize for not posting—but, no). Or I could do what I meant to do five years ago at the very beginning of the Great Canadian Undergraduate Adventure (see also: sleep, lack thereof, papers, philosophy, journalism and Life). I could publish a Top 10 list publicly.

(Like anyone reads them on this blog beyond my mother and the Gazette's sports editor—hi, Ian!)

Some context: I enjoy creating top 10 lists. They're not particularly original in formatting, but I'd like to think the content offers some sort of unique view on the world. Or it might make you laugh—a bit. Traditionally I did them on Thursdays, and emailed them to my mother. Since neither of these are true now and tradition is something I rarely follow at the best of times, here's Top 10! Now proudly on Wednesdays, or whenever I remember/get time to do it.

This week: The Top 10 Things to Avoid if You Want to Regularly Update a Blog!


10. Write for other blogs. The guilt about not posting then ends up multiplying into this raggedy, multi-formed beast-monster with seven wings and a drooling horse head that follows you through the corridors of your mind.

9. Enrol in journalism school. Many J-Schoolers do have blogs, and after three to five years the guilt will eventually overwhelm most students who end up needing one for the ever-evolving and extremely sexy-sounding “online CV.” The irony of this is that the time commitment required for journalism school renders reliably posting coherent thoughts to a blog almost impossible.

8. Begin or even think about beginning a novel. The truth of it is that while you get loads of brilliant blog post ideas while writing, they all resolve around complex meta-fictional literary techniques and really should never be hared publicly. I'm a fan of keeping my writing time private. And it also eats that precious time like you wouldn't believe, at least if you're serious about it. Actually, if you're writing fiction but aren't very serious about it a blog is probably perfect for you.

7. Own a TV. Although a really believe that television is becoming and has become a background medium (a future blog post topic—which I got while writing), it can be really distracting, especially if you get worked up about political scandals or bizarre refereeing decisions in sporting events.

6. Live with anyone else. The truth, at least as I see it, is that it is vastly preferable to talk to someone else than to the internet. This is often forgotten these days, but shouldn't be. Besides, there is nothing worse than trying to have a nice dinner-time conversation about blog postings.

5. Run for editorial positions on any campus paper, or for that matter, any volunteer organization. The amount of coordinating via email is astounding. The exhaustion even more so. Exciting personal projects like blogs, ground-up video game stories, and procrastination get utterly sidetracked by trivial responsibilities like putting a paper out, and paying staff.

4. Sleep. This is generally a good way to do just about nothing as a young adult because one's body demands just about a tonne of it. I could sleep most of the day if I wasn't concerned about things like my health and all the stuff that's already overdue.

3. Worry about procrastination. Actual guilt over procrastination leads to doing the things you are procrastinating about. An interesting philosophical paradox occurs when procrastinating about blogging, which is basically a way of procrastinating about doing other things. So how do you procrastinate about procrastinating? It's impossible, but when you are feeling guilty about not posting, logic doesn't matter any more.

2. Relax. Even if you do, as I do, take a certain amount of pleasure and gratification in writing to an audience (of none), coming up with blog posts and then editing them to within an inch of their lives because this process was hammered into you in first year J-School , the thrill of posting will never make up for the sapping, draining, energy-sucking drudgery of actually getting the post up, again, thank-you journalism training.

1. Think about how badly one needs the aforementioned online CV. Such thinking does not lead to actually creating such a page--it leads to long, dark, depressed evenings lying on a bed staring at the ceiling and wondering if one will ever be successful as a freelance creative professional. Such questions solve nothing and get nothing done. So get working on something else and stop reading this post now—you need a portfolio, go make one.

And that just about wraps it up for another top 10. Sometimes they are funnier than this. Sometmes they are not. It's up to you what you think.

In theory, since I'm now in my self-constructed authoring workshop with a tutorial in self-promotion (cough, cough), I will be able to post more frequently. But we've all said that before.

Happy blogging!