Keeping up

It's been a very busy couple of days--as usual--which meant that I've neglected blogging of some sort here.  While daily blogging was not on my list of resolutions for 2012, it's something I wanted to work at resuming after failing to keep the years-long streak going in late 2011.  I suppose I could have backposted entries or forced myself to stay up, but I think the best thing for me as a writer (and as a person who needs to sleep) and you as a reader is to hold myself to a more reasonable standard.

What might that be?  Simply put, I pledge to write here on a daily basis within reason.  Some days, like yesterday, I'm simply too swamped to write something, especially anything of value.  When that happens, so be it.

I'm going to aim to write earlier in the evening, which ought to help with typing up something more worth your while.  Typically I'll sit here after 11 or 11:30 p.m. (or into the next day) grasping for a topic.  Trying to whip something up when I'm tired doesn't exactly lead to great results.  I think too that waiting until the very end of the day, or start of the next one, has made this feel more like homework that I've procrastinated on.

Writing for writing's sake can have its value or rewards, but it also means a lot of unproductive work.  On a related note, I bought a Moleskine journal for writing down immediate reactions, notes, and thoughts for the movies I see.  I'm bad at taking notes--I don't, in fact--and while I remember broad strokes and some details fairly well, the sheer bulk of what I watch means there's plenty of things that occur to me that I don't retain.  Putting those thoughts down in a physical book has already aided in the writing I do about film and, strangely enough, may be more helpful in finding them again.