I am no back and coincidentally have also returned to higher education.
The two things are certainly coincidental, there is of course an overlap in the thought process. A blog of the nature this has been, based primarily on politics in some form or another has a particular overlap if someone (myself) has been studying social science of some variety at the same time. I think though the coicidence is more about my mindset and the willingness to write.
This blog has laid dormant for some time now. My last blog post was over 5 years ago, and that was a one off. Prior to that it had been approaching a decade since regular blogging. Incidentally I no longer think I agree with the content of my last post. However I have chosen to leave it as it certainly was what I thought at the time. Perhaps in the future I will write a reply on the same subject outlining what I now think.
So going forward what will this blog be, at times the blog was good. There are some widely read and engaging articles for the correct reasons, there were also some widely read for the wrong reasons. The blog despite the time and effort I had put into suffered for several reasons which I will attempt to address going forward.
Firstly there was a lack of seriousness, not that a blog, without advertisement, and therefore an unpaid endeavor produced as a hobby rather than any other reason should be taken seriously. What I mean by this is that the content was not taken seriously, or rather the quality of the content was not. It was a serious case of quantity over quality. I felt that the way to be a successful blogger was to pump out content. I felt the need to create a post daily. I have no idea why, some of the bloggers I followed did, but even some of the most regular were only posting 2-3 times a week. This meant the quality suffered and also keeping up the regularity became a chore rather than enjoyable.
That was not the only problem, the blog also suffered from the arrogance and bravado I held in youth, there was present in many a post and was further exacerbated but the drive to churn out articles.
I was also obsessed with getting hits, I spent more time promoting the posts than actually writing them. Don't get me wrong. I of course want people to read it no one puts their writings online if they have no interest in being read widely. This time around whilst I still want the hits. I want it to be more organic than before. Initially I have no plans to link blog posts anywhere on social media instead will focus on writing and publishing and for the blog to regain an Identity at first.
So what is the blogs new identity. In short, at this stage I do not fully know. Previously, despite the flaws, significant as they were the blog had a very clear identity of politics and sociology. It certainly will contain this, but I also feel there will be other subjects covered which have not been previously. I have several ideas for topics to blog about. I won't list them now as it would feel like a commitment to write which I do not want to make.
That brings me on to the other big change which I think would reverse the trend. That being quality over quantity. I plan have no plans to set myself any kind of limit of minimum blog posts and instead simply having a mindset that I will post regularly (whatever regularly becomes to mean. In fact initially and perhaps for some time. I will limit myself to publishing one article per week. I would only deviate from this for two reasons, either by creating a backlog of unpublished articles or if something I had written was particularly useful at the time of writing. As time goes on this pattern could change. The crucial thing is there will be no unrealistic timetable for publication. This will be done deliberately so that there is so pre-determined regularity without the need to force articles.
Although, as I have stated the articles will have a more serious character, it does not mean that every article will be some masterpiece or a fully worked out essay, there will be some essay or at least essay style posts, but by serious, I simply mean that the post will be more thought out, rather than rushed out.
The next few articles which will be published over the coming weeks have already been written at varying times over the last year, but as I have not been blogging never made it here before.
To future blogging.
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