Saturday 12 April 2008

Blogging the Blog 5: My 200th Posting

Well, eleven months have passed since I started blogging and here I am having reached my 200th posting. In the early days I did not think I would make it past the typical 3 months duration of a blog and I still find each month starting with me fearing that I will have nothing to say. I suppose the reason why I am still hear is because this blog has straddled so many different facets of blogging. It is a scrapbook for the things that interest me primarily counter-factual history discussion, maps of imaginary places and occasionally my own fiction. It is also a journal blog in that it charts my highs and lows, though despite feeling pretty suicidal in the first three months of this year, 2008 is turning out to be a lot less unpleasant than 2007 did though I can see repossession of my house coming in the future so more of me whining about the British housing market may be on the cards for 2009. This blog is also an anger management blog and I think that is what gives it vibrancy. The scrapbook items take time to assemble and write, but the anger management aspects come right out very quick and there is a lot to be angry about, not just with what China is up to and how the rest of the world is simply letting it get on with it, but the erosion of civil liberties in the UK and of course always the pig-headedness of so many British people whenever I encounter them in the car or broadcasting.

The title of my blog came from my wish to get things out of my mind and cast them away, in the way Ancient Romans did with curses (though when I went to Bath I found they used pewter as much as lead, but given that their pipes were made of lead I imagine there was a lot of it around to use in the same way, so I have stuck with lead) and I must say it has been incredibly successful in that. There have been loads of things that have irritated or interested me that I have been carrying around in my head for decades now and telling people about them whenever I can (often to the annoyance of friends, particularly women who seem far less tolerant to hearing the same point raised more than once than men are). This blog has proven to be the perfect vessel for putting them in as I can die a happy man knowing that all those things I wanted to get across to people are at least out there in the public domain and people can read them or ignore them as they choose, but at least they have been said.

So, this blog is a kind of download of me and all the clutter in my head. I really have no interest if anyone else is interested in what I say, though I know there are people out there who share my interests. Even if I stopped blogging tomorrow, I would have gained a great deal from this, it has really helped me to get my frustrations out in a non-shouting, non-violent way probably all to the better for myself and the people who live around me. Blogging allows that iota of revenge on the morons you encounter on the daily basis, it is like sounding your car horn when you are cut up by some idiotic driver, but it is a hooting that goes on and on and people can come along and listen to and agree or disagree. No matter what they feel about it the sound goes on and that is incredibly satisfying to the blogger and so, in turn, actually very therapeutic. I have no desire to stop blogging, in fact there are a couple of things I want to get on now. Will I have enough to last another 200 postings, well, we will have to see...

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