James Proclaims!

Oh, here he comes, the ‘podcaster’. Too high and mighty for the blogging community now, is he?

You’d be forgiven for making that assumption.

I haven’t been back here for the best part of a month, after popping in briefly — following years of already inconsistent blogging — just to announce the launch of my new podcast. During that missing month, I also managed to sail right past my 11th blogiversary without a word. Which, let’s face it, probably adds further fuel to the fire that I’ve fully abandoned the written word for the microphone.

But I haven’t abandoned blogging. I genuinely love it. I used to do it a lot, and I’d like to get to a stage in my life where I can do it a lot again.

If I’m honest, I’ve been a deeply unreliable blogger since about 2022. That is largely because I transitioned from being the parent of one daughter to being the parent of two daughters. As it turns out, having two children is exponentially more time-consuming than having one. While I have frequently sat at my desktop over the last few years trying to think of something to write, my exhausted brain never seems quite capable of stringing a coherent sentence together.

“Well, how on earth do you have time for a podcast then?” I hear you cry.

Well, obviously I don’t hear you cry anything. This isn’t that kind of medium. If you are crying at your screen right now, that’s probably a separate issue.

But making a podcast is different. For starters, there are two of us involved. This is incredibly helpful because when one of us can’t be bothered (which is often), the other one will give the first one (the one who couldn’t be bothered) a stern talking to.

Secondly, there isn’t really any writing involved. There is a tiny bit of planning, otherwise it would just be two middle-aged men talking. Although, in fairness, that is still largely all it is, and actually seemingly what 90% of all other podcasts are anyway.

Once we’ve come up with the basic concept of an episode, it is largely a case of switching on the microphones and speaking. If you talk for long enough, and once you’ve got a handle on the editing software (and if I do say so myself, I am becoming a dab hand at Audacity), even the most banal of conversations can be rendered into a perfectly passable podcast offering.

Whereas blogs work a bit differently. There is, even for the nonsense I oft churn out for these pages, an element of planning and composition. Well, ok, in the period I refer to as my ‘golden age of James Proclaims’ there was a fair bit of appalling poetry. And frankly, if I ever do get back into a regular blogging habit, there will no doubt be a renaissance of the terrible limericks and haikus. But I did always put a bit of effort into the prose. Believe it or not, I’m even putting a bit of effort into this.

And all that effort, on a good day, results in what? 20 ‘likes’ and maybe a couple of comments. Comments which often gently mock the post itself. We don’t really blog for the ‘acclaim’, do we?

Whereas the podcast has, in its short life, already garnered considerably more listens than I could ever imagine getting readers. And we’ve had a few reviews. Ten five-star ratings on the Spotify and two actual written reviews on the Apple. Where are the five-star reviews for the blog? Honestly, I don’t know why I bother.

Oh yeah, that’s right, I don’t bother. But I will bother. In spite of the general indifference of the world, I will not abandon James Proclaims.

But equally, I don’t really know when I’ll be back. Hopefully soon. But if you’re missing me in the meantime, you can always listen to my podcast.

Wait, was this post just a shameless plug for the podcast all along?

Well, no. As I’ve already pointed out, very few people actually read this blog, so it would be pointless plugging anything here.

If anything, I’d be better off plugging this on that.

But there’s no point plugging this if I don’t actually start writing more posts again.

Anyway here is the link to the podcast: [Listen on Spotify / Apple]. Do with it what you will. Or don’t. See if I care. (I do care, please click it).