A Sort Of Penultimate Post

Yesterday I posted a haiku that, as with all my haikus, failed to meet most of the criteria to qualify as a haiku, and might, instead, be more accurately described as a senryu. Indeed it might be even more accurate to describe it as a small collection of words. Irrespective of its credentials, however, the message in the sort-of-but-not-really-a-haiku was that I won’t be writing any more of these sort-of-but-not-really-a-haiku things for the foreseeable future. According the WordPress stat machine, it was a fairly popular post, which either means that:

1. People are really quite glad I won’t be doing the haiku thing anymore.
2. The haiku ‘tag’ generates a lot of visits but no-one actually reads the posts.
3. People really liked the post.

Other explanations may be available.

I suspect that answer ‘2’ is the most accurate. I do tend to get positive statistics for my haikus but I imagine the fact that they are as easy to consume as they are to produce is the reason why. I don’t think they are beloved so much as easily digestible. Which is fine. I mainly use them as a device to keep the blog ticking along when I can’t think of anything to write. Occasionally I’ll put together a seventeen syllable ditty that I’m actually proud of but mostly they are just filler and I’ve been using them a lot this year because I’ve been on a bit of a blogging streak that I’ve wanted to maintain.

Tomorrow, if I post tomorrow, I will have achieved the feat of posting every day for 365 consecutive days. I checked, and even though 2020 was a leap year, because I started the streak after February 29th, my 365 days will constitute a full year of consecutive daily posting.

I didn’t really start out with a goal of posting daily for an entire year, but once I’d built up a bit of momentum it seemed like I might as well see it through.

I haven’t written tomorrow’s post, and there is a part of me that would enjoy the irony of maintaining a streak for 364 days and then giving up slightly before hitting the finish line. But I think I will write something tomorrow. I can’t imagine it will be especially good.

After tomorrow though, I am going to have a break.

I don’t know how long this break will be and I don’t imagine it really matters. As much as I would like to believe that anyone would miss my internet-based ramblings, I suspect the only person who will really miss them is me.

The last time I had a break after a lengthy blogging streak, I pretty much disappeared for 18 months, occasionally resurfacing to announce a ‘comeback’ only to then fail to actually come back. Bizarrely I did manage to produce two of my much-ignored annual advent calendar of sort-of festive films in that time but beyond that I did very little.

I’m not planning to be gone for as long this time.

I might even be back next week.

But when I do come back, I definitely won’t be posting daily anymore and I genuinely will try and avoid posting haikus for a bit.

None of this matters of course, but I enjoy a little bit of pomposity as much as the next blogger, and so announcing my imminent blog break as if were something of importance is very much the kind of thing I’d do. Hence I did.

See you tomorrow for the ‘finale’.