James Proclaims!

It’s been a while since last I posted anything on this blog, and mindful of that fact, I shall begin this post with an acknowledgement of my absence. I believe this is the established protocol of the long-term absent blogger. And I should know. My last post, an almost isolated incident of the 2025 calendar year, was to celebrate the fact that this blog has existed for a decade. As that post (and indeed anniversary) was almost six months ago, I wonder if some further celebration of my longevity as a blogger is merited. Writing a post every six months is eminently sustainable. At a rate of two posts a year, I could keep James Proclaims a going concern for many years to come, with each post celebrating a new six-month milestone of achievement. I’m not entirely sure what purpose that would serve, but I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of this blog is, nor what it has ever been. I think it was mainly about making me write stuff. Writing stuff is something that I think makes me vaguely content. Writing stuff also makes content for this blog. So more content would make me more content. I’m actually a little ahead of the aforementioned ‘two posts a year rate’ for 2025 but even five posts a year does not quite cut it. I need to up my game in order to be a happier me. December will skew the statistics with my annual Christmas movie countdown, but that’s only true because I wrote all of those posts ages ago. The only way to stop 2025 from being a complete blogging bust is to write a bit more often in November. This is hopefully the beginning of that.

As it happens, I’m slightly overdue a laminated certificate commemorating a decade in my current day job. I was mildly depressed by the five-year certificate, and frankly that seems like it was issued to me only five minutes ago. Not that I dislike my job. If I absolutely have to work (and my mortgage provider is fairly keen that I do maintain a status of gainful employment) then I’m happy enough to do what I do. But doing the same thing for ten years is a bit of a kick in the teeth to the ambitions of my youth, which, while not exactly specific, did involve me achieving a degree of creative fulfillment and financial security that still seems to elude me. I’m perhaps a little ‘glass half-empty’ in that regard. I don’t have that much to complain about. I have a lot to be happy about. And the things I’m not happy about are mainly things I could do something about if I wasn’t so good at procrastinating.

I am an excellent procrastinator though. I could be the world’s best procrastinator if I could be bothered to put the effort in.

Not that I have been idle in 2025. I have done things. Some of them have even been quite interesting.

Having two young daughters (the seven-year-old Little Proclaims and the three-year-old Mini Proclaims as they are known on this blog) is simultaneously wonderful and fairly limiting. There is an element of groundhog day about my life at times and I’ve never been a great one for routine. I’m good at wasting my own time, but these days I find I have less time to really get stuck into my procrastination. I mainly don’t write because I feel like I am constantly busy, but at the end of most days I’d be hard-pushed to tell you what I’ve actually done. In 2025 I have made a bit of an effort to try and actually plan in some activities and I have done quite a few things. But fitting in those things around the usual demands of being Dad, has left me with no time to write about them.

I don’t think 2024 was a vintage blogging year by any stretch of the imagination, but I did write a few more posts, and I achieved that by mainly writing about my life as a father of two small children. Writing about the minutiae of life is sort of what I do. Writing about things I have enjoyed doing is something I find less easy to do. So quite possibly my lack of productivity on this blog is partially because I’ve had too much going on in my real life. I’m perhaps a better blogger when my life is slightly boring.

Today I seem to have found time, because I curtailed the planned activities for this morning in order to wait in for a roofer. He did turn up, which is a positive start for a tradesperson. I think I probably did allude to the significant structural failings of Proclaims Towers a year ago. Things have improved slightly and the need for a roofer today was a more proactive than reactive decision on my part. Although it turns out that I was right to call him and I don’t think it’s going to be cheap to fix the problem. I was mentally prepared for this eventuality. He has gone now with a vague promise that we’ll schedule in dates for the work to happen soon. I’ve had a lot of recent experience of dealing with tradespeople, so I won’t be holding my breath for the promised follow-up phone call any time soon, but I think there is likely to be a big enough final bill for him to consider fitting me in at some point in the future. It’s also likely to be a big enough bill that I’m relatively happy to wait for him to fit me in at a much later date.

However, I suddenly found myself with time on my hands today. Little Proclaims is currently obsessed with her tablet. I’m vaguely conscious of screen time etc. and I’ve set fairly strict parental limits, but I’m also aware that kids do sort of need to be able to access this stuff too, so I do let her have a bit of an extended run of screen time on a Saturday. A whole two hours in fact, which I feel is quite generous, although she profoundly disagrees with me. A biproduct of this, is that it does keep her fairly quiet. Mini Proclaims is less interested in screen time, but is currently under the weather. This is unfortunate, and resulted in a fairly sleepless night for her and for me. She is convalescing at the moment and also fairly quiet. She’s shown signs of her old self and I’m sure the hurricane that is life with a three-year-old will be back soon.

So I have used the time permitted to me today to write this. If this represents the beginning of new golden era of blogging regularly then it will have been a good use of the time. If it’s yet another standalone post which results in me not writing anything new for several more months then it probably wasn’t.

Assuming Mini Proclaims continues to recover well, we’re off to see some fireworks tonight. We do this every year in honour of some bloke called Guy Fawkes. This year, the organised display that we go to has decided to hold the event on the Saturday before the 5th November, even though the Saturday after is actually closer. It does mean it’s taking place the day after Halloween, so they’re labelling it as a ‘Fireworks Spooktacular’. I’m not sure what to make of that, but I am vaguely intrigued as to how the event will live up to the implicit promise it appears to be making.

Perhaps it will be the subject of my next post.