On the subject of regular updates
Because I ran out of time this month

So, a while back I decided to commit to a fixed release date: the last monday of every month. While it became official then, it was mostly a confirmation of a trend that started with this blog’s “revival” back in november 2014: to release one article near the end of each month. “The last monday” simply felt like an adequate point.

So far it has worked pretty well, except right now. Here I am, on the last monday of August, with nothing to write about. I was seriously thinking about skipping this one, but I like having an actual work ethic now, so that couldn’t do.

So I figured I could write about writing itself.

So why couldn’t I write this month? Three things, really. First off, I have a few ideas down the pipe that I don’t want to talk about yet beause the timing wouldn’t be right. Also, of all the things that happened this month, no subject wasn’t already covered in better ways by someone else. I could have talked about how much Konami sucks, or how new games and rendering APIs on PC are finally starting to use the hardware to its best potential. And yet, none of that really excites me. Maybe I’ll come back to it later if I can find an interesting angle. Otherwise I’ll let more competent people than me talk about that. And finally, I procrastinated quite a bit this month, so I couldn’t fish something out of my backlog in time for the deadline.

I could have taken a break. It’s summer after all. But I only write one article per month. It’s not like it’s taking me a tremendous amount of time. Between my job, my girlfriend and video games, I still have plenty of time to write articles on this blog. Just because I hit writer’s block does not mean I shouldn’t keep going.

Last week has been the second anniversary of this blog. Reading back my earlier work, I don’t really like it. I think they’re somewhat messy, they fail to bring their point accross in a clear and consise manner, and they’re overall really not that great. Most of the issues can be explained by my lack of skill as a writer. After all, this blog was my first real attempt at writing essays. But I also think many of them were rushed in order to meet some illusory quota.

Which is why I insist on sticking to a low publication density. So far, I’ve managed to keep my objective of one article per month, with little to no problems, and I seriously think about increasing to “two articles per month” format starting next year. Interestingly, having such low content output means increased stakes for each release, and having more articles would allow me to write shorter articles, thus increasing the amount of subjects I can cover. However, I don’t want to go further than that unless I can spend more than few hours per week on writing.

Alternatively, I could switch to short “rapid fire rant”-style articles, which I’m sure would be hilarious and entertaining, but would ultimately be a fruitless and empty excercise. And really, I’m already doing that on Twitter. This is for longer things, and I’m going for substance over style here, and if nobody reads my stuff because of it, then so be it. If somebody gets something out of it, then great, but for now I still write for myself, as a way to put my thought out there.

I’ll figure something out. And with that, I’ll see you next month!