Football Manager Blogger's Lament
I wish I had more time to write.
Football Manager Blogger’s Lament
When I was a kid, I kept a daily journal.
I was proud of my journal. I tried to write in it every day. However, the 9-year-old me didn’t really know what information was useful and what wasn’t.
It’s kind of fun to look back at those journal entries. I’d write about silly stuff — the shows I was watching on television, for example, or the book that I was reading, or what my friends were doing.
I also got into a bad habit.
I wanted to write every day. However, I completely miscalculated the amount of time that it takes to write a journal every single day.
It’s easy to see when I was busy. My journal entries would turn into some variation on “nothing happened today.” I have weeks upon weeks of those entries — journal entries that do nothing but disappoint me all of these years later.
I’m happy that I had the tenacity to write every day, but I really wish I could have found something to write. Something — anything — with even the slightest bit of substance would have been more interesting.
I’m worried that I’m making the same mistake with this blog.
Internet Writing
I know of a number of blogs that provide tips for internet writing.
It’s a pretty simple gimmick. Some guy who had a modicum of success writing online promises to give you the secret to attracting a large online audience.
The idea is apparently to learn how to produce barely coherent writing quickly and in bulk. In my opinion, it takes the joy out of the writing experience completely. Writing something spur of the moment without rereading, editing, or even bothering to use correct grammar is about as much fun as writing “nothing happened today” in your journal.
However, it’s difficult to find the right balance. You can’t expect a daily blog to contain beautiful, descriptive prose in every single post. You’re going to have to write something at some point in time — and the temptation to buy into those gimmicks really is strong.
A Brighter Future
I’m not going to buy in, though.
I’m not quite sure how I’ll make this work, but I will try to improve the writing on this blog in the future. At the very least, I’m hoping to get my life organized enough to where I no longer write posts at 9 PM, trying to squeeze something in before going to bed.
Today wasn’t the best day for this plan, by the way. I started this post around 8 AM, but wasn’t able to finish until 9 PM.
And so goes the plight of the Football Manager blogger. Real life seems to intervene far too often, and posting time winds up being spent in unproductive and pointless work meetings, or running around town performing various mindless chores.
But we’ll get through this. Just wait and see.