February 16, 2009
Last week, for the first time since mrtopp.com went live, I experienced blog-doubt. Additionally, I imagine that a number of you out there are wondering what has prompted the creation and content of the Big Bad Blog. (The latter is probably not true, but it is something I like to imagine.) And while I try to avoid navel-gazing here, I hope that you will indulge me as I ruminate upon the reasons for the various bits of this blog:
One of the things I enjoy most about the blog is that I have given myself a schedule. I took my morning routine of news, blog and webcomic reading, and turned it into The Morning Coffee. This has met the two purposes for which it was designed: First, it focuses my reading behaviour — prior to the blog, I looked at the blogs of my friends, the Globe and Mail for Canadian news, the BBC for British news, and a small handful of webcomics. In order to provide a more varied experience, I now read a wider range of news, blogs and webcomics — I hope this enriches your life a bit, but it was designed to enrich mine and has been successful at that.
There is a downside to that, of course. I have an ever-increasing number of bookmarks that I open each morning, and a larger and larger subscription list in Google Reader. For some reason, the amount of time available in the morning has not increased to correspond with this. There is no doubt in my mind that I will need to cull my reading list on a regular basis, and the first cull will happen soon.
Second, the morning coffee forces me to write to certain structure and exhibit some sort of editorial discipline. While I may occasionally cheat on the format, the ‘coffee consists of news, blog, blews, an image and a webcomic — one of each. I find it a bit of an interesting process.
The remainder of my schedule is as follows: Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I blog about roleplaying. On the weekend, I share things I found on the internet during the week. Monday and Wednesday evening, I blog about whatever comes to mind. The idea behind this is simple: I force myself to blog to a particular topic twice per week (roleplaying, Tuesday and Thursday), and to write regularly on other things that interest me without constraints. And this is where the crises of confidence occurs.
Why did I choose roleplaying as a topic? And why twice a week?
The answers are simple enough: Roleplaying came up as a topic because I was starting a new D&D game, and started blogging about it. I found that I had written five times in two-and-a-half weeks and just ran with it.
But last week, I began to realise the limitations of roleplaying as a topic. Sure, I have played roleplaying games for nearly twenty-five years (a bit scary, I know), but until last month I had not played in nearly three years. In 2009, I intend to play once a month, but there will probably be months where the opportunity does not present itself. And unlike technology, current events, or a myriad of other topics, roleplaying does not move much. I cannot buy, read, test-play and review games or supplements on a regular basis. Nor would I want to — as much as I enjoy playing, they do not interest me nearly enough to expend so much attention on them. Why am I doing this?
The more I think on it, the more it seems like a valid question. I will simply run out of material. Once a week (or even once every two weeks) will be more than enough to explore the ideas that occur to me as I rediscover my roleplaying muscle. But twice-a-week topic-specific writing is still something that I want to do. The only question on my mind is the topic.
Science/Technology and Sociology? And Public Policy? These are certainly interesting things. The problem with these is that they are hard topics to write about on the fly — I can write about roleplaying while on the tube, disconnected from the Internet. It doesn’t matter, as I am just sharing what is in my head. Blogging about current events, public policies, or scientific and technological breakthroughs require source material. Much more difficult, but I am not going to let a little bit of difficulty stop me.
I think that the Big Bad Blog is not serving my interests as well as it could or should. This is natural, it being in its infancy. What do you think? Will you miss the roleplaying articles if they are less frequent — say, twice a month? Do any of the above topics intrigue you?
