Article for 2014 Sep 30

2014

2014 Sep

Sep 30 Tue

When is Duncan going to post a new article? That’s a question I ask myself every time I update the “Blog Stats” page or upload photos to Flickr. And I don’t know the answer.

That’s a lie. But it’s also the truth. It’s the truth in that I don’t have a particular date to post an article on, or even a particular topic to write about. It’s a lie in that I know I’ll post an article once I have the idea for it. What that idea might be, and whether there will be an idea at all that I’ll want to make into an article, that’s another question.

I’ve been here before. In the summer of 2011, I wondered if I could keep the blog going but still keep it fresh. Oh no, that’s a cliché, isn’t it? Can’t resort to those. Let’s get the thesaurus out. I wondered if I could keep the blog going without writing stuff so trite that I’d get sick of it: my attitude to the platitude has a latitude of ingratitude. (Fun fact I just found out: “latitude” is a synonym of “degree”. Check the thesaurus if you don’t believe me. Oh, Roget’s isn’t a normal thesaurus. Darn it. Let’s move on.)

I managed to cobble some articles together for the end of 2011; and 2012 was a brilliant year for the blog with my school-trip to Paris, my witticisms on schoolwork, and my “A Cestrian Pedestrian” series. But by the end of 2012 again I was wondering if I could keep it up, keep the ball in the air, so to speak. Even though I never really was that good at football.

Could I keep it up? Only because of the most constant amount of mental anguish I’ve yet experienced. I consider “Cusp” the greatest bit of Duncan’s Childhood Blog I’ve ever written, superior even to the 2012 articles, but it took five months of living on that knife-edge of self-doubt and self-hatred before I dared to bring about the conversation that brought about those articles. It’s not happening again.

What else can I write about? So far in 2014 it’s been almost entirely about Jigsaw and Quartz, the Cestrian drama-groups I worked with on Monday and Tuesday evenings. But I’m at uni now, no longer in Chester, or indeed in the same constituent country. I’m no longer there. And I always feel like devoting my blog to those two groups is like devoting a TV channel to ads, and never having proper programming. Speaking of programmes, I will be designing one for Jigsaw’s next production, “The Strange Adventures of Odysseus”, so there’s that to anticipate.

I seem to have digressed. Describing stuff I’ve already described is re-treading old ground. That’s meant to be the crux of this article. What was I writing about? Oh yes, my inability to even know whether I’m going to write more articles for Duncan’s Childhood Blog.

My best articles, the articles I most want to be writing, are the articles I most want to write. They’re the articles I write because I have a brilliant idea, and a brilliant structure to express it in. These things come to me in epiphanies: I need a flash of inspiration from above for them to happen. I need lightning to strike me, really. And lightning doesn’t strike me all that often. I’ve been struck about four times this year: the first three of which led to the articles 2013 Dec 20, 2014 Apr 09, and 2014 Jul 09; the fourth to a little project outside of Duncan’s Childhood Blog. The first three happened ages ago. The fourth is rather irrelevant to this website.

I also need the motivation. I’m spending my efforts on course-work and doing fun stuff with my friends (which include a kind-of creative-writing society), so why do I bother with a little blog that no-one reads and was never really written for other people to read anyway? The truth is that I don’t bother with Duncan’s Childhood Blog anymore, and won’t unless lightning strikes me like it’s done before (but unlike it’s done before, otherwise I’d be repeating myself), and even then I’d probably channel the bolt’s energy into something outwith Duncan’s Childhood Blog. So yeah...

Let’s move on. Let’s move on with Duncan’s Childhood Blog, or without Duncan’s Childhood Blog if need be. If want be, rather.