My blogging resurgence has been going pretty well. The new schedule I introduced for myself back in June seems to be something I’ve broadly been sticking to, and I feel like I’ve rolled back the years in terms of my renewed productivity.

I’m not at Covid levels of prolificacy, which is possibly a good thing, because the conditions that engendered that level of commitment to my online presence were not wholly desirable. Although I didn’t entirely mind the reduced working hours and the general avoidance of people.

Where I am now blogging-wise seems to be more akin to 2017 levels. The world is a confusing and disorienting place, but from a pandemic perspective, we seem to be operating at more of a ‘common cold’ level, and I think that’s broadly how I found 2017 too.

I didn’t have kids then, though, and I do now, so perhaps my world is a tad more disorienting than it was then, but the kids are older now and require slightly less supervision.

As I write this, they’re in the same room as me, but playing with something called kinetic sand, which promises not to be as messy as actual sand – a claim which Mini Proclaims is testing to the full.

Of course, my new schedule has not been seamless. I have missed the odd day or two since bringing myself back to the blogging table, but I always expected to, and frankly my return to blogging is built on the premise that it’s okay to miss the odd day if I need to. I’m operating a sustainable blogging model these days, which is sensible and, I imagine, very on trend.

The one bit of my new regime I thought I probably would manage, even if I missed other bits, was the Sunday Summary, because that’s just me telling you about all the other stuff I’ve written on this blog. But somehow that seems to be the main casualty of my first stumble.

But it seems worth me persevering, not least because as well as helpful links to all the other stuff I’ve done, you also get a top-quality preamble like this beforehand. So it’s tremendous value for money, really.

Anyway, I’ve not done one of these for about a month, so there is a month’s worth of blogging to catch up with. I didn’t blog every day of the last four weeks, though, so fear not, it’s still a relatively manageable list of stuff to catch up on. Starting with:

Monday 13th July, when I wrote about my children not sleeping during a heatwave.

On Wednesday 15th July, I wrote a haiku about the fact that stress makes me hungry.

On Thursday 16th July, my Throwback Thursday post revisited my ridiculous comparison of a man who ran a deli I used to frequent with the fictional kingpin from the TV show Breaking Bad.

On Friday 17th July, I wrote a poem which seems like it might be some kind of existential crisis. And it was, because I wrote that poem during a particularly long and pointless meeting.

Having missed the Sunday Summary that should have summed up the above, I then continued my little fall off the blogging wagon by skipping the Monday and Wednesday post of the following week, but I did return:

On Thursday 23rd July, my Throwback Thursday post was about some triangles I have used (and in fact misused) professionally.

I then wrote a Friday poem the day after about laundry.

I then vanished for a week, before making something of a mini-comeback.

On Monday 3rd August, I wrote about my daughter’s birthday. Because it was her birthday.

On Wednesday 5th August, I wrote a haiku which seems like it might be how parenting pushes you towards bad decisions.

On Thursday 6th, my Throwback Thursday post honoured the first ever edition of James Complains.

On Friday 7th August, I wrote a poem about how I was ill. Because I was ill.

Which brings us up to the week just gone:

Monday 10th August was a blog post largely telling you I was about to launch a new solo podcast.

Tuesday 11th August was the actual launch of said podcast (which we’re now calling James Podclaims), which met with much fanfare and acclaim. Or one person who wasn’t me listening, which frankly is more than I dared to hope for.

Wednesday was a haiku about my increasing dependence on ‘smart’ technology and the negative impact it’s having on my own cognitive functioning.

Thursday’s Throwback was an homage to the very first poem I published on this blog. Although the jury’s out on whether it even is a poem.

Friday was an actual poem about how I feel guilty about letting my kids have too much screen time, but mitigate that by making them watch everything in French.

Which brings us up to this, which is the much-heralded return of the Sunday Summary.

Hooray!