I’ve been a blogger on and off for eleven and a half years. Even during the lean years of James Proclaims, I’ve managed to produce something sporadically enough to keep my membership of the blogosphere valid. I’ve got the badge and membership card to prove it. Admittedly, I made them myself – it’s amazing what you can do with Canva.

Before James Proclaims, I was always a bloggish sort of person. I started and gave up on numerous blogs before sticking with this one, and prior to that, before I really knew what blogs even were, I used to send unsolicited emails to my friends and family on a regular basis, particularly during the time I lived in Paris. And I say friends, but what I really mean is, people whose email address I had.

I started blogging mainly so I could keep writing without troubling people’s inboxes, but it turns out that amateur model I had is now what all the Substackers do anyway. Writing a blog and waiting for people to just happen across your work is apparently not a growth model, but spamming people who happen to share their email address with you, seemingly is.

So I held the keys to the kingdom about twenty-four years ago and gave them up for this little cul-de-sac of a blog.

But lately I’ve been on fire. Not literally. That would be dangerous. Don’t play with fire.

But metaphorically I’ve been on fire. I’ve been producing content for this blog as if blogging’s going out of fashion. Which it isn’t, because it went out of fashion years ago. Roughly when I started blogging, actually.

But the point is, I’ve been prolific. So prolific, in fact, that I’m writing this ages ago. I won’t give the timeline exactly, I don’t want to ruin the magic. As far as you’re concerned, I might be writing this an hour before I posted it. But I’m not. This was written a really long time ago.

From your perspective.

Obviously, from my perspective, this is being written now.

But my now isn’t your now.

And while it’s true that bloggers and their readers always experience different ‘nows’, because ‘live blogging’ would be a terrible idea, my ‘now’ and your ‘now’ are more different than you might imagine.

I’m really on top of my blogging game right now.

Which is great news if you like this kind of stuff.

And indifferent news if you don’t, because no one is ever forced to experience a blog they don’t like.

Unlike on TikTok, where, the second you open the app, you lose all control and find yourself being spoon-fed excrement, with the occasional jellybean thrown in to fool you into thinking it’s a worthwhile experience.

But I digress.

Only slightly, though.

We’ll be circling back to TikTok in a moment.

But the point I was making is that I am a blogger. A proper blogger, because you don’t need to earn money from blogging to be a blogger. It’s a bit different with the term ‘writer’. I like to think of myself as a writer, because I do write stuff. And within that terminology I’d consider myself to be a poet, a storyteller and an essayist. But I’ve never been paid a penny for my writing and there is some snobbishness among people who earn their living as writers as to whether an amateur such as myself should really be using that terminology about themselves. I’m sort of vaguely aware that this paragraph might be the one that generates the most comments on this post. Don’t get sidetracked. I don’t care if you call yourself a writer or not. My philosophy around identity has always been – identify how you like and call yourself what you like, but don’t actively try to make other people miserable in the process. Which is a cop-out when it comes to some very real identity issues that seem to be prevalent in the media at present, but again, this post isn’t about that. And I’m not qualified to comment on anything much, in truth. Apart from the things I am qualified to comment on. But I have very little interest in those things.

Anyway, I am a blogger. Of that there is no doubt. And a blogger is a sort of ‘content creator’, right? I think it’s OK to call yourself a content creator even if you don’t make a living from being a content creator.

Which, I suppose, should apply to the term ‘writer’ too.

And perhaps in some ways to the term ‘blogger’.

Like, if you ask me what I do for a living, I’ll say my actual job title. And most people will stare at me blankly, so then I’ll say ‘teacher’, which is what I’m qualified to do. And I do do sometimes. I definitely work in a school. But I don’t do a lot of teaching because my job has evolved quite a lot since I qualified and I’ve picked up other qualifications and become a bit more specialised and…

But that’s not the point.

The point is, if asked what I do for a living, I’d say ‘teacher’.

I wouldn’t say ‘writer’, or ‘blogger’ or ‘content creator’.

Because those things are all fundamentally hobbies.

Would I like to earn money as a writer?

Obviously.

I do this for fun.

If someone paid me to have fun, I’d sign on the dotted line immediately.

But I’m a hobbyist right now.

And a professional something else.

But, as far as all this blogging goes, it’s all content, so I have been a content creator for a long time.

And now I do some podcasting and make short videos, which is a different kind of content.

So my hobby really has become content creation.

So it’s fair to say I’m an amateur content creator.

And really the point of all of this is that I really hate that term. Content creator.

Because I don’t want to make ‘content’.

I want to make art.

Now, you might scoff and say that nothing I do would merit the term ‘art’.

But that’s OK, because art is subjective.

Some people would consider this to be art.

And frankly, they’re entitled to their opinions, much as you are entitled to yours. Even if you are wrong.

I’m not saying it’s good art.

But my endeavour is to be creative and interesting and a bit different.

And I would definitely agree that some of what we call ‘content’ is art.

Some content creators, at both an amateur and professional level, are artists. Not all talented artists, but artists in spirit nonetheless.

But not all of the so-called content is art, or even close to art.

Which is why I don’t really identify as a content creator, in spite of arguing a very compelling case that I am a content creator.

I can’t deny the facts, however.

I make content.

I am a content creator.

I’m just not a very content content creator.