I Can't Go On. I'll Go On.

This weekend sees the first anniversary of this blog, and that means it's time to decide whether to stick with Plan A, which was to spend a year checking out the Blogging Experience -- finding out what it was like having a public shop window and whether anyone would like what they saw in it -- and then maybe moving on to to something else. I always had the example of photographer Alec Soth's blog in mind, which ran a brief but exciting arc from September 2006 to September 2007.

I was unsure whether I could sustain regular written content of sufficient interest and variety to entertain both myself and anyone else who happened to read it. That has not turned out to be a problem, but it has been difficult finding a consistent tone and subject matter, and (perhaps not unconnected) impossible to boost the regular readership into three figures. I've noticed I get the most visits and the most comments when I attempt humour, and when I get into the territory of family and personal history. But it's also clear that most people, understandably, prefer their content to be predictable: the people who arrive here because of an interest in Panasonic cameras are not going to stay to read about Joni Mitchell, and the ones who like blogs to operate in non-stop confessional mode are not going to be turned on by donnish jokes about obscure words.



So, what to do? The thing is, I've got used to making the effort: it's like keeping a diary that I happen to leave open for others to read. It concentrates my attention on what I really mean to say to know that even as few as 50 people may read what I write. And, of course, it's useful being able to give new photographs an informal outing, before new sequences and books take shape. The reactions to them can be quite instructive. I'm enjoying this too much to stop.

So, in short, I am going to carry on for now, but perhaps at a considerably more leisurely pace. I may also try to write less, as in "write fewer words" -- I'm appalled, looking back at what I've written, at how pompous and portentous I can become, once I get going and the word count goes up. So I'll stop now, having undertaken to carry on.