I'm Getting That Blaugust Feeling Again...

 

I wasn't even going to post today but let's just give Belghast a big shout-out for stepping up yet again to organize the annual festival of blogging that is Blaugust. I can't imagine there's anyone reading this blog who won't already have heard about it but every voice counts in getting the word out so here I am, doing my bit.

Bel has the full details on how to sign up plus an explanation of what there is to do and an extensive historical overview of how the event came to settle into the format we all know and love. Naithin has neatly excised the specific contact details, which I have stolen and pasted in below. I hope the links still work...

• You can sign up for Blaugust 2024 here.
• Join the year-round community Discord here.
• Follow the Blaugust Mastodon account here.

Right at the start of his post, Bel describes how very successful last year's Blaugust was in terms of outreach. It certainly brought in a whole new bunch of bloggers I'd never heard of and would never have read had it not been for the event. 

That's the fundemental purpose of Blaugust and it has to be welcomed. As with all things, though, success does not come without its own potential drawbacks. For me, the downside of the way Blaugust has expanded its reach so effectively is that there are now more Blaugustian blogs than I could ever find time to read, far less respond to.

Added to the sheer quantity, now that we've extended our remit far beyond gaming and related topics, there are also quite a few blogs on that list that I rarely read at all outside of Blaugust. It seems a bit weird to have a section on the blog called "The Places We Go" when I actually don't.

Consequently, for the first time I think I'll hold back on adding every last newcomer to my blog roll as they sign up, something I've been doing every year since I first joined back in... whenever the heck it was. Seems like forever ago. 

I'm not going to remove any of the ones that are already on there, regardless of whether I'm reading them regularly or not, but I think this year I will wait until Blaugust is over before I add whichever new blogs I know I'm going to keep following. I'm sure there'll be some great ones. There always are.

Other than that, I guess it'll be business as usual. I've already come up with a series of themed posts to slot in whenever I need them so as to reduce the stress of trying to hit that 31 post target. (Yes, I know it's just a number...) If anyone's found the pace challenging in the past, I highly recommend writing ahead. It really makes the whole thing a lot more fun, although maybe that's just me...

For once, I've also picked a topic that won't go out of date and have to be heavily revised before I can publish it, which was something I had to do several times last year. Kind of defeats the point of preparing stuff if you have to re-do it before you can use it.

I've written half a dozen posts so far. If I can just get another four or five done before the end of July then I'm golden. In fact, I think I'll stop here and use today's saved blogging time to go write another.

I'm all excited already!