Weekenders On Our Own (It's Such Fun)

Naithin at Time To Loot posted not once but twice earlier this week, warning anyone who cares about people listening to what they have to say not to post during the weekends. It's very good advice. It's been a long time since I paid close attention to readership figures at that level of detail but when I did I certainly saw some evidence to support the theory and more recently I have noticed that weekend posts are less likely to generate comments, even when they're quite juicy.

Then again, it's hard to anticipate just which posts will gain traction no matter when they appear. Sometimes I hit publish on a lengthy piece that positively bristles with comment hooks only to sit back to... silence. Other times, a short post knocked up on the spur of the moment gets a flurry of attention. 

I'm very glad I don't have to concern myself unduly with any of this stuff. I'd hate to have to make any part of my living trying to second-guess the capricious interests of the crowd. Luckily, since I mostly post for the pleasure of writing and the satisfaction of seeing my work on screen I can pretty much post what I like, when I like.

If I was going to worry about responses, though, I have a dread feeling one of the worst times I could choose to post anything I really cared about might be now, in the middle of Blaugust. And on a weekend, to boot. 

It's one of the ironies of this wonderful festival of the written word. Someone mentions it every year, usually towards the end, maybe in "Lessons Learned" week, and several people always chime in to agree. There's just too much to keep up with. It's not just the writers who suffer burnout during Blaugust - it's the readers, too.

I thought I'd mention it now rather than waiting until the end because even though this year's class isn't quite as big as some years, it's pretty big all the same and I'm already falling behind. In normal times I generally manage to read every post flagged up in my Feedly and most of the ones that strobe to the top of my blog roll. During Blaugust I find myself being more selective.

Okay, a few of the blogs I've added in previous Blaugusts and New Blogger Initiatives, the ones that center on real-world crafting or listing every known Pokémon, perhaps, don't always get the diligent attention I'm sure they deserve even in the quiet times. Still, mostly I hit most of them, most days.

At the moment? Not so much. I'm lagging. I can't keep up. I've been skipping some posts I'd normally read and declining to comment on some I did, even when I have something to say. I imagine it will get worse before it gets better, too. 

That's actually the aspect of Blaugust I find the most challenging. The reading. Writing thirty-one posts in thirty-one days is relatively straightforward, not least because this is the one time of the year we all have license to blog incessantly and obsessively about blogging itself, one of the easiest of open goals. Look, here I am, doing it!

To avoid too much of that, I'm very glad I came up with my Blaugust Backup Plan before Blaugust started. There are other reasons, too. I am absolutely loving writing the posts for each of the Pitchfork 25. Not only is it hugely enjoyable for me, riffing on some of my favorite music of the last quarter century, it's also got me listening to some albums and songs I haven't heard for far too long and, most importantly, asking myself why I like them all so much. 

Back when I had an active social life, I used to have long conversations about why I liked things, rubbing the rough surfaces of my assumptions against the sharp edges of the objections of others. These days I tend just to like stuff and not think about it all that much... until I blog about it.

That's one of the less-frequently mentioned benefits of blogging - the way it makes you think about why you like what you like rather than just liking it. Not that there's anything wrong with just liking stuff but a little self-analysis is healthy, so long as it doesn't get out of hand.

Enjoyable, satisfying and revealing though it may be for me, however, it would be self-deceiving of me to expect many people, reading my thoughts on how and why I came to enjoy this album or that, to be quite as royally entertained by those thoughts as I am. And as for eliciting comments... well, what is there for anyone to say, really?

Which does make Blaugust feel like an appropriate time for a project like this. If anyone's feeling overwhelmed, hey, here's the perfect opportunity to skip a post or twenty-five! I won't even know because no-one would have said much about any of them anyway.

Less obviously, it's also not a bad time for a series of enthusiastic posts about a game no-one else is all that interested in reading about. Okay, that does pretty much sum up what you'll find here all year round, but as has been widely reported, the summer of 2021 has turned out something of a bumper crop for mmorpg fans. I'm guessing we've all got our favorites and I'm also betting no-one else's favorite is Bless Unleashed. No-one needs to be scraping the detail on games they're never going to play.

I am playing it, though. And enjoying it, too. I'm going to write about that. I won't be able to stop myself. I don't even want try. I was going to post about it today until this happened.  

With a bit of luck I'll be mostly over BU by the time Blaugust ends. Maybe I'll go back to Blade and Soul, another game no-one's interested in reading about. I was having a great time there, too. Then we get to the end of September and it'll be time for New World.

You just know everyone's going to be blogging about New World, when it comes. It'll be like Valheim all over again. Maybe that would be the time for posts about Bless Unleashed and obscure albums. It's called counter-programming, I believe. Anyone wants to run with that when New World finally goes live, be my guest. I'm sure we'll all be reading.

Especially on the weekends.