The return ...to whatever this is

Hello, hello, my friends. How are we all today? My name is Geoff. And this is my blog. 

I found this old thing in the drawer. It was under an assortment of yellowing faint-ruled notepaper, paperclips, and half-used 2B pencils. Once I dusted off the ...well, dust, I was hit with a sense of nostalgia. 

Blogging has been a long-running fascination. I remember my earliest attempts at something like it. I had one of those MSN Live Spaces. I can't remember a great deal about it, but I know that I had a profile picture in which I was wearing a backwards cap. The cap was inspired by the character of Randall from Clerks 2. I liked his laidback attitude, and his assessment of the Lord of the Rings films - "Three movies about walking to a volcano." 

I briefly wrote a newsletter about an online game, Chosen Space, which was shutdown a long time ago. The layout was a quaint design which reminded me of school newsletters from back in the 1990s. I would report about the happenings within the game each week. It didn't last too long. It felt too much like work. But my fondest memory of it was getting paid. It was a single modest tip from a reader. It wasn't much but it was nice. 

I wrote a political blog back in the day. I tried to write about Australian politics from a relatively neutral perspective. Now that felt like work. I kept it going for several months, until I realized that it was just an unpaid job. And that's often how regular blogging feels. The highlight of that blog was that it gained significant traffic. That was the first one which brought in over a 1,000 pageviews on some posts. Mind you I used to promote the blog on Twitter and Facebook. 

Other than the abovementioned, I have tried personal blogging more times than I can remember. And I have quit personal blogging just as many times. It's interesting how I always run out of steam. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks. Sometimes a couple of months. But it always happens. 

Earlier this year I returned to the hobby of art. Painting and drawing has taught me a lot about myself and my motivations. There's a lot to unpack. But the most important takeaway has been that I have to love the process more than the result. If I'm focused on making a pretty picture to impress other people, then I end up hating the process of making art. When I flip it around, so that I love the process regardless of the final outcome, then I have a lot more longevity in my practice. 

So what does that mean?

Maybe I need to blog. Maybe I need the wordplay and creativity. And maybe I would stick with blogging for longer if I shift my focus toward the process, learning to love it regardless of the outcome. That's probably a little inaccurate. The process exists because of the goal. A journey exists because of the destination. So the end still matters. Maybe a gentle rebalance is all that is needed.