Happy Halloween everybody!
If indeed that is the correct greeting. Although maybe a ‘happy’ Halloween is not a successful Halloween. I wouldn’t know. I’m not a great observer of this particular holiday, mainly because, in the UK at least, it isn’t a holiday at all and the only reason I didn’t go to work today was because it was Sunday.
Although Halloween does often fall during the half term holidays so, being a teacher by profession, I do often have Halloween off work irrespective of the day of the week upon which it falls, but I don’t specifically have the day off because it’s Halloween so it’s a coincidental holiday at best.
It’s all largely irrelevent because this post isn’t about Halloween. It would have seemed churlish not to have acknowledged that today is Halloween, but now that that acknowledmgent has happened I feel it is appropriate to move on.
Today is the last day of October, and, aside from a few exceptions over the years, October tends not to be a prolific month for me blogging-wise. Last year I did manage to post a lot during October, but that’s only because it fell during my pandemic-inspired ‘year of consecutive daily blogging’. That particular folly ended in March of this year, and so I’m now back to my more regular ‘boom or bust’ style of blogging, whereby I will go from being a prolific blogger to a largely absent blogger for no rhyme or reason. September and October are often quite bad blogging months for me, which probably does link quite strongly to my profession as they do tend to be quite busy months in terms of my day job, and 2021 has proven to be consistent with that pattern.
On the other hand, November, which is usually no less busy from a work perspective, has tended to be quite a productive month for my banal outpourings. This is, I think, because I tend to find November quite a depressing month, and blogging is generally an activity that tends to perk me up.
So I am hopeful that, for the next month or so, I will be a more regular presence in the blogosphere. Indeed I am fully committing now to participate in National Blog Posting Month (or NaBloPoMo as the cool kids are calling it), which means I have to post something every day in November. I’ve done this before and indeed I’ve managed many a blogging streak that has exceeded 30 conscutive days over the years, so this year, I thought I’d make it a bit more of a challenge than usual, by not writing any of my posts in advance of the day on which they will be posted.
This kind of ‘live’ blogging is something of an anathema to me – I like to write my posts a few days in advance ideally, so it is possible that my writing will not be of the highest quality. Then again, even with a certain amount of planning and editing, many of my previous posts have set quite a low bar, so I don’t suppose regular readers will notice a significant dip in quality, if they notice a dip at all.
I thought I might also double down on the challenge by simulatenously attempting National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo as the cool kids are calling it). I’ve attempted, and failed at this traditional November challenge a few times in the past, and indeed have often affectionately lampooned it on this blog rather than participating. But I’m feeling a certain baseless optimism that this year is the year that I’ll manage produce the 50,000 words required to call myself a NaNoWriMo ‘winner’ even if the vast majority of those words will be incoherent nonsense.
Indeed such is my commitment to churning out lots of really bad writing for the next 30 days that I’ve temporarily decided to disable the commenting feature on my blog. I’m not the best at replying to comments in a timely fashion at the best of times, but if people are going to be kind enough to leave a comment of one of my substandard missives, I feel a certain obligation to respond, albeit often weeks (and sometimes months) after the fact. But I’m definitely not going to manage to do that for the next month and keep up with my arbitrary ambitions, so it’s probably best to avoid the issue entirely.
You will still be able to ‘like’ all of my posts though.
Whether you like them or not.
James Proclaims! 