Cleaning out the drafts

I have a pretty rigid routine for checking the web every morning. I always visit the same sites in more or less the same order - usually after checking my e-mail.

The routine basically involves going through message boards, blogs, news sites, reading columnists and visiting various other websites I’m into.

While I’m going through all these sites I’m making a note of things that spark my interest (I should probably add them to delcious but I never remember) so that I can do something with them later.

And then I open Wordpress. When I have Wordpress open I write new posts around the ideas and things I gathered during my morning trek.

But I don’t. I write a headline, I add a weblink and sometimes I even get as far as writing a couple of paragraphs - but I rarely ever actually finish them.

It’s got so bad that until a few minutes ago I had hundreds of draft posts just sitting there unlikely to ever be completed - but because I’m an ADHD, OCD riddled geek I couldn’t bring myself to delete them.

Well I’ve finally done it - I’ve gone from having hundreds of draft posts to just five draft posts. And as soon as I click publish - five will become four.

The other four posts I’ll be writing at some point (hopefully before I forget why I’ve saved them) are:
Bloggers: Saviours of local news?, Jelly as an art form?, Earning man points and British Cultural Expansion.

I think they fit the brief I’ve set myself with Up Your Ego, basically to ‘create a guide to surviving life in the 21st century’.

And in the meantime - I’ll try and remember to add my ideas to Twitter and Delicious instead of creating draft blog posts nobody will ever see!

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Sharing my crap

I write thousands of words a week. Some of it is good but most is pretty run of the mill. But there’s also a LOT of crap and that is what I want to share with you today.
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How do you write yours?

Every day I write hundreds if not thousands of words. Some in e-mails, some on social networks, most in articles and many in blog posts.
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Five tips when writing online

I’ve been working professionaly in new media for a decade now - the first half as an interactive designer and the second half as a new media journalist. Over the decade I’ve written tens of thousands of words.

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Shut up about the BBC

I’m a vain kind of guy - not vain as in spending hours in front of the mirror - if you’ve seen my hair you’ll know I don’t do that - no vain as in wanting to know what people are saying about me.

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Do we need politicians

A while ago I was listening to Joanna Newsom watching the waves crash against the sea wall and pondering politics.

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Headline first

Photo CC by Woo

I’m a big fan of the ability to create draft posts within Wordpress - it means I can write a series of ‘hold’ pieces to use when I can’t come up with any original ideas.

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What happened to time?

When I was younger, so much younger than today - a day felt like a week, a week felt like a month and a month like year.

Back then time seemed to go by so much more slowly than it does today.

I swear I’ve been put into some bizarre time machine while sleeping and taken a year into the future – It really does only feel like a week a go that it was New Years Eve 2007.

Basically what I’m getting at is – my wife is nine months pregnant and our new baby is due on Friday 11 January – that’s just a few days away.

Of course as this is our third child I know all to well that it probably won’t arrive until towards the end of NEXT week but you never know.

What this means is – when the baby comes, for at least a fortnight posts are going to be few and far between.

I’m taking two weeks off work as paternity leave to help my wife out and to bond with the new baby, and so I can still be alive during the day while surviving on about an hours sleep a night.

I will try to post here whenever I can, or when I feel awake enough to write a few words down – or at least when my brain is operating well enough to put two words together.

I’m hoping to come back in full force in about three weeks with a new look, a new logo and a new, more streamlined approach – I’m hoping to turn Up Your Ego into a blog looking at New Media, Citizen Journalism and media generally in the UK.

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Lost the bug…

When I first started writing a blog back in November 2004 (god have I really been blogging for three years?) it was like a bug, everything I saw that was of even the slightest interest made me want to blog it.

I’d compose blog posts in my head if I was out and try my best to remember them when I got back to a computer - I’ve written blog posts on my crappy little mobile phone and even found scraps of paper to jot down ideas.

This all came from a desire to share my opinion, however worthless or pointless it might of been, regardless of whether anyone is actually reading it or not.

That bug seems to have gone - for a while blogging has been more like a chore - sort of like having this space I need to fill every day and thanks to boring grown up things - I haven’t had time to do it.

A lack of time then led to a loss of interest and now I only post when I can scrape a few spare minutes - which 1) doesn’t lead to a paticularly interesting blog and 2) isn’t particually fullfilling in terms of developing my writing style, getting stuff of my chest and generally just … doing something with my thoughts.

So the questions I’m asking myself are, and this comes after two weeks of no posts:

“do I let upyourego.com lay fallow and only update when I can be arsed”

“should I just shut down the blog and be done with it - use jaiku, pownce and twitter to express an opinion”

“should I try my best to keep it going, instead of keeping opinions to myself just get on with a quick post”

The reason I’m asking these questions is that I still have ideas for posts - all the time - I just don’t seem to be able to muster the desire to take it from an idea in my head to actual text on the page.

I know it doesn’t take long to write a quick page but I just don’t seem to have been able to get beyond writing a headline.

I’ve opened the Wordpress control panel countless times in the last two weeks, I’ve even half written posts but don’t seem to have been able to take any of them to a conclusion - if I had there would have been at least two posts a day for the last two weeks and no need for this piece of self flagulating bollocks.

Thanks!

Oh and the first episode of my new, new music show (focusing on the Jersey music scene) goes out on Friday 7 December (18:00-19:00) on 88.8fm in Jersey or bbc.co.uk/jersey if you live outside the island.

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