A Dracula ClockAlthough writing regularly for this weblog has been a rather new thing for me, I have been writing pieces for work, or other web sites for many years. That being said, mashby.com has been some of the most consistent writing I’ve ever done in my life, which I’m quite proud of, but other the past few weeks I’ve been running into the same “monster” that I’ve run into with past writing tasks – time. Ask anyone these days and chances are they will all tell you that they could use more time in their day. Clearly most of us feel that there isn’t enough time, but for me the constraint of time is a real doozy on my writing.
There’s something about having to stop what you’re doing so that you can write. For me at least, that means that I have to slow down and relax. I have to collect my thoughts and then take the time to clearly formulate a story. I find it easier to write in the morning, before I’ve started my day and before my brain has revved up and engaged first gear. Those early morning hours, when my brain is just idling and warming up with a hot cup of coffee, is when I seem to do my best writing. When the day is in high gear and I’m going “90 to nothing”, it’s very hard to downshift and ease off the throttle long enough to write something halfway intelligent.


Over the past couple of weeks, the time monster has been reeking havoc on my usual routine. As a result, I haven’t been posting as much as I’d like to. The challenge that I’m facing is that I’m doing more and finding less time to write about it. My “quiet time” has been at a minimum for the past few weeks, so either I either DO or WRITE, but I can’t seem to be able to do both. With spring in full bloom, tons of gardening and yard work to do, Dan in town, trying to get the motorcycle started, bicycling 100+ miles per week and the regular chores and tasks of running my own business, community groups and trying to have a wee bit of a personal life, I’m not left with a while lot of time left in which to write about everything that’s going on. 😛

That sucks, because there’s so much that I want to share! I’ve recently done a face plant in my driveway, have a ton of cycling rides to talk about, want to share my recent addiction to espresso, as well as movie reviews and other various and sundry stories. I’ve started half a dozen of these entries on my AlphaSmart Dana, so there’s hope that I’ll get them done someday, but for now that Time Monster has me firmly in his grasp. 🙂

It’s times like these where I’m envious of other weblog authors who have a distinct knack for writing concise and to-the-point entries, like Fiat Lux, or more personal and straightforward entires like Brainology.net. Both of these authors write excellent entries, but they are able to keep them short and to the point. I find it next to impossible to write in this manner. What others can write about in 300 words, takes me 1500. LOL (As a side note, I just noticed that I’ve written over 200,000 words in 14 months – hard to fathom) Yet, it’s not just the brevity in which I’m envious of, it’s also the way in which they talk about personal stuff too. For some reason, this weblog has taken the form of what I would call an article style, meaning that instead of short personal updates, entries are structured more like an article, or a short story. I like this style and I don’t want to change it per se, it’s just that I sometimes wish I had another outlet for certain topics.

I’ve been slowly working on a re-design of npug.org and I’ve been toying around with the idea of keeping a diary while I go through the process of the redesign. Clearly this would make for a good weblog and could easily be hosted on the NPUG web site. I can even see this weblog continuing after the redesign is complete since there’s plenty of other NPUG stuff to write about. What appeals to me about starting a whole new weblog is that it would be much more straightforward and simpler in format. No images, no links, just my thoughts on NPUG at that moment. Writing in that kind of style is very appealing to me and yet THIS entry is about how my time is so restricted, so how do I have time for ANOTHER weblog? :O

Maybe it’s a passing fancy, or maybe it’s a deep desire; at this point it’s way to early for me to be sure, but it would appear that I’m looking for another outlet. Clearly I like writing and sharing my personal thoughts and mashby.com doesn’t seem to give me all the outlets I need. Even though the Time Monster has me under its thumb, it’s something that I’m going to have to explore a little bit and see if this is a path worth following or not. Of course whose to say that there’s even an audience for this new weblog? But is that really the point? If a writer posts on an unread weblog, is it really a posted? 😉 I’ll give this some more thought. Stay tuned.