It seems as if each May things around these parts slow down to a crawl. Reading through the archives from last year, there is a distinct lack of anything worthy of reading. This makes me sad.
When you decide to publish something that others can see and follow, there develops a certain expectation to be reliable. Sporadic writing means a loss of readership, as most don’t have the desire to check in daily to see if something new has been posted (percentage-wise, those that follow along via RSS are relatively few). I know that over the past six years, I’ve stopped tracking many a writer’s work because they seemingly flaked out. In reality, though, I’m sure their lives just got in the way.
Blogging, for all the stupidity that this term encompasses, is an unruly beast. The grand majority of those that decide to take their inner-monologues online end up abandoning their endeavors early on. Perhaps saddened by the lack of readers or maybe just realizing that they didn’t quite have as much to say as they initially thought, the abandoned domains stand as virtual ghost towns, dotting the internet landscape. I’m proud that denyingphoenix has lasted five years, and that I’ve been able to turn it into something that holds a meager yet respectable following. The process of writing each week has helped me in numerous ways that have positively influenced other areas of my life and work (which was the original intent). But when May hits, things get rocky.
The best that I can surmise is that there is a correlation between newly warmed weather and this absence of content. No, I’m not out skipping around in the sun, frolicking and soaking up the sunlight (hello? I’m bonafide Irish, ergo I get a crispy burn within approximately 2.4 seconds). Instead, I fear that the warmer weather means a rush of work to be done around the house. From yard maintenance to garage cleaning, deck staining to washing the siding…there is far too much to be done, in a very short amount of time. And the amount of space in my pea brain that is usually reserved for idea formulation for denyingphoenix is now occupied by these to-do lists. Morning commutes are no longer spent mulling over life in an attempt to extract a story, but instead spent chastising myself for forgetting to water the hanging ferns. (Note to self: do this when you get home).
So while each May it seems as if I forget all about this tiny little mental parking lot, I don’t. I’m plagued by a hefty amount of guilt because of this negligence, but we’ll just give it time. In a few weeks, things will settle down, I’ll hit my stride, and I’ll be back to having a steady flow of poorly-written, ill-conceived stories that likely entertain but a few of you. And hopefully Jonas will do something more interesting than learning how to rip the tops of our fence posts off, because that is so not worth writing 1000 words about.
