Coming and going

I wanted to see how many blog posts I've made this year, but I couldn't find a date-search function in Blogger. So I did it the old-fashioned way and paged through my archives and counted the posts.

The grand total for this year: 27.
The months with the lowest number of posts: March (1) and December so far (1, with this post)

I used to be a lot better at this.

I've been thinking lately about why I don't blog as much as before, and I think that other than not having that much time-to-blog, it's also that certain things about public and private life now mix online and off, in ways that make me write in a less bloggy fashion online. It's not necessarily a censorship issue. Sometimes, jabbering about something on Twitter or Facebook is enough to satisfy that urge. Sometimes, I don't want to get into a protracted conversation or discussion online about an enormous issue.

Sometimes, even though something fun's going on in my own life that I'd like to blog about, like being interviewed for a Channel NewsAsia current affairs show, On the Red Dot on Wednesday, shortly thereafter real life intervenes with much more pressing matters.

(I will say that Wednesday's interview was the first time I ever had to snake my hand under my shirt in full view of the Lorong 8 Toa Payoh hawker centre  in my 'hood, in order to pin on a clip mic.)

I don't see how I could possibly blog less in the new year, and I'd like to bring myself up to an average of one post every week, if possible. It might be a good break in the next few months of intense novel writing.

That reminds me: During an informal WriteCamp session at the Singapore Writers' Festival, where I was talking about how writers can use Twitter, I remember a young man who asked a question along the lines of, "Isn't Twitter a distraction from writing?" To which I said, if you want to procrastinate, anything can be a distraction: "When I really need to write something, suddenly I'll decide that I really need to clean my bathroom."