It is perhaps with a sense of embarrassment and disappointment that I look back at these pages and realise that nearly two years have now passed since I posted my last article on my blog. It has strangely been something that I have thought about frequently in recent times with an air of frustration and bewilderment.

I have made a decision to finally get back on the proverbial horse and thought it would probably be a good personal exercise to write a (quick) post about why I stopped writing in the first place as a starting point for moving forward.

I did start to write a long rambling post about why things came to an abrupt halt but realised I was falling into one of the same traps that resulted in me stopping (writing overly verbose posts that were not fun to write and very time consuming to produce).

Back in early 2009 I started writing my blog which first spent a year hosted on the Blogger platform and eventually ended up on WordPress.com. The reasons for starting it were manyfold but included:

• Provide a resource for me
• Provide a resource for others
• Provide a forum in which I felt I was being listened to

However, after some reflection, I think the reasons for my zero output over the last couple of years has included:

• A lack of time due to other activities which included the increase in webinars (and video editing) for my virtual group.
• Writing posts primarily for the benefit of others made the exercise less meaningful (and useful) to me.
• Long-winded posts and long time spent writing them became less fun.
• The demise of PASS and fragmentation of the community for some reason made me lose direction.
• New employer demands on my time made extracurricular activities harder.
• Concerns about the costs and functionality of the WordPress platform (do I keep writing or put energies into making a move elsewhere?!).
• COVID lockdown hit and resulted in other things to worry about.

While I cannot overcome some of these issues, I can at least address some of them. I therefore am committing to the following:

1. Set a realistic blogging target (aim to do at least one a month, but don’t write for the sake of it).
2. Write for primarily for yourself (if I benefit from the material then it goes without saying others will do too).
3. Keep posts short, to the point, and avoid the waffle.
4. Look at ways to reduce employer demands on my time (this one might be the hardest to fix, but I already have a long-term plan in place to address this problem).
5. Look at alternative blogging platforms.

I could say an awful lot more about why I stopped blogging, but then I’d be breaking rule number three :D. Hopefully, I can stick to these five simple rules going forward and will reflect back on how things went in twelve months’ time. If you have had similar difficulties in blogging output over the last few years I’d be very interested in your reasons too.