A friend of mine recently complained that I hadn’t posted anything on my blog for ages. This was quite a surprise, as I thought that most people would probably be pleased with my lack of activity.
Quite frankly, there can’t be that many people who are comfortable with the idea of me wasting valuable internet space with my waffle instead of somebody else using it intelligently with thought provoking articles into the workings of the human mind or perhaps broadening humanity with photographs of cats in boxes.
In response to my friend’s complaint, I rather rashly suggested that I should write a blog piece about not writing a blog piece. Unfortunately, this idea seemed to go down quite well, and I was challenged to do just that – blog about not blogging.
That was a few days ago, and since then I’ve thought long and hard about what to write about not writing. And not just that either, because writing about not writing is not only a difficult subject to make interesting , but it’s also nigh on impossible to make even mildly amusing, let alone trouser-rippingly funny like my usual efforts.
(Actually, that’s not true. I haven’t heard of anybody who has genuinely ripped their trousers whilst reading my words, although I’m open to the possibility that it may happen one day).
In fact, it would be far easier to climb Mount Fuji using only my teeth than make this interesting. I mean, what idiot would even attempt to write about not writing? It’s as daft as selling cucumber wrapped in cellophane or wearing leather shoes with blue jeans. It’s also exactly the same as asking a team of highly paid professional football players to not play football – nobody is going to do it. Unless you’re Roy Hodgson of course, in which case you will.
However, it is an issue that has been attempted before by this author [Warning: no writing if it’s warm], but that was about enjoying the good weather and therefore not quite as specific as this is.
So when writing this, I have to be clearly focussed on this one topic alone; I need to make sure that I concentrate on the issue in hand: that this blog entry has to be solely about not blogging. At no time should I allow any other subjects to intrude on the narrative or embark on a tangent that doesn’t have any relevance to the matter.
What I shouldn’t do is to talk about the latest news or a silly thing that I’ve just seen. For example, I shouldn’t write extensively about how I’ve recently discovered a stone statue of a headless duck in our garden, which is sitting next to a prostrate plastic heron whose legs have fallen off. Quite why a headless duck feels the need to be next to a legless heron, I don’t know. They obviously feel more secure in each other’s company, otherwise they would be at opposite ends of the garden. I like to think that it’s because the heron can look out for any impending danger and the duck can kick and flap the enemy to death.
Anyway, I digress. This blog should be about not blogging, and that last paragraph very clearly wasn’t. All the others are though. Including this one. So do not think I can’t write about not writing, because I can, as this blog post evidently proves.
Thankfully though, because this blog post has now been published, I’m not going to get any more complaints for at least another five months about my lack of writing activity.
And if I don’t publish any more blog entries for five months, in January I shall just have to write about writing about not writing. Or how to rip trousers whilst reading.
If you’ve ever ripped your trousers whilst reading any of my material, please let it be known by either leaving a comment below, via twitter, facebook or by using the silly annoying form on my website (www.anthonyweb.wixsite.com/writer/contact).
Anthony Phillips 