Challenge: Accepted

There's a comedian in the UK named Richard Herring who has this blog called Warming Up (look!, I remembered how to put in links like everyone between the ages of 6 and 46 should surely be able to do by now) which is quite good, and on which he posts every single day. For rather more than 3000 days in a row, now. Which is amazing, and which has briefly inspired me.

The thing is, I feel like you either need to have a fairly interesting and varied life (like, say, that of a touring comedian) or Something To Say to do that well. And I haven't really got any kind of big point to make. I feel like if I could send a message to every person in the world, some kind of deep cosmic message of hope or something, I'd probably end up sending out something like "Honestly everyone, could we all please just take a deep breath and generally try to cut each other a little slack? Everyone has off days, ok, so let's all try to be a bit more understanding of each others' failings and agree not to get too het up about things which are none of our business, ok? And maybe judge things and people rationally on their merits, on the understanding that circumstances, things and people all change, and that race/religion/sex/sexuality/whatever should probably have no major part of that, ok? OK??" Which probably wouldn't work, since the last guy who tried that got nailed to a bunch of stuff and then before you know it, bam, the Spanish Inquisition is torturing folks for being nice to each other in the wrong way, and the Irish are blowing up folks whose folks took differing advice from different dudes in funny hats about how exactly you should go about being understanding, and thousands of potentially hot monks throughout history are swearing vows of eternal chastity and shaving bald patches on themselves in order to get better at judging people on their merits rather than taking wallflowers on dates to get coffee, and a whole bunch of the time nobody wins even though that is clearly not at all the point.

Anyway, since we can dispose of polemic, I think (and who wants to read polemic every day anyway? Good grief) that leaves us with "documenting an interesting life" and miscellaneous. Obviously my first urge is to dismiss the former out of hand, but I guess although my life is not remotely interesting in any meaningful way (it's not very interesting to lead, so it's hardly likely to be interesting to read), it is at least different from day to day. So ok, here's what, a challenge: every day until let's say the end of June, I'll write a blog post. Some probably pretty short, some maybe even good! A lot of the things which are interesting and happen in my vicinity are obviously confidential (either patient stuff or stuff which friends might say in confidence, or thoughts I might have which would probably be actionable if they appeared in print), so this will probably be a bit... fuzzy, but that's all to the good, since I've pretty much only ever blogged by opening a page up and then just thinking as usual but typing as I go. This is a lot of the problem, really.

The next problem, of course, is that this seems silly if no-one but the 10 people who "follow" my blog (at least 6 of whom I suspect to be bots) find out and read any of it. I mean, I imagine no-one but Dave Grey (who seems very bored at work?) will read all of it, really, but you've got to hope. So obviously the thing to do it tweet or facebook links. The problem is (more specifically, this is like the chewy core of the problem I mentioned in the last sentence) that there's a word for that: "promoting". You "promote" your blog on facebook and twitter or whatever. And as soon as you think of it as "promoting" it seems... overweeningly dickish? I think this is the phrase I'm looking for. Overweeningly dickish. Like, a nice, interesting, entertaining person whom you know and like doesn't click "promote" under their facebook statuses. Harvey Norman clicks it.

Plus what's the goal? What am I looking for, in this hypothetical "promoting"? I'm not going to get famous. I know a few people who've managed to parley blogging into actual careers. My best friend from kindergarten writes a travel blog which is slightly mystifyingly called "The Bubble Buster" and she seems to actually get paid endorsements or trips or something out of it. Another friend writes about gaming, apparently for the sheer love of it, and yet another collects memes , which is interesting (and sometimes horrifying) to scroll through, but which I secretly suspect stems from a deep seated OCD-style desire to catalogue the best bits of the internet. He's pretty up-to-the-minute, though, so it means I get to not only keep abreast of the wacky worldwideweb but also feel like a total hipster when he posts things I've seen before. This mainly happens after I've unexpectedly had a bunch of time off which I've spend mindlessly thumbing through tumblr, so I assume it takes him hours and hours of work to collect them all. The only other person I can think of who makes an effort to actively tell people about her blog is Tab who's new style blog is beautiful.

The thing is, these people all have a theme, and I don't. More relevantly, I actually don't really know what they're hoping to acheive with their blogs any more than I know what I'm trying to do with mine.

Also, vitally important clarification, these dear and articulate friends tell people about their blogs, and post about them, and generally try to get the word out, which I guess is what "promoting" a blog is, but I wouldn't for a moment call any of them even slightly dickish, let along overweeningly so. It's the word itself which seems smarmy. In someone who isn't a huge corporation it's fantastic to see people who are confident and proud of their work promoting it. It's Gerry Harvey who needs to stop. And me who would need some kind of zeitgeist, or even, frankly, just some kind of gist, before I could really embrace it. Maybe sometime over this June it'll all crystallise and the whole thing will be excellent.

Tell your friends!