The function of the 'placemark entry'...
This is a placemark post for a blog not up-dated in several weeks. The mere fact I’m posting about not posting amuses me highly. Is it content? Is it lack of content? Is it content about the lack of content?
Be Back Soon Style Posts…
Such posts are actually very common though, quick notes or explanations that e.g.
There’s been too much going on to get near the blog recently
Other area’s of life have required the time and attention or changed substantially recently
Term has just started so time has vanished
A particular looming deadline or, even worse!, combination of said had meant dropping everything else in life and focusing on that or those alone
Lots of things have been happening, just not ones appropriate to discuss on the type of blog you maintain (e.g. because they’re outside the scope you’ve chosen for it)
Reasons people do them
The reasons people make these posts are all good ones.
It basically means:-
1. They’re perfectly aware of the vacuum
2. It’s nagging at them
3. They intend doing something about it soon and want to show they have actually noticed (in which case it’s probably also saying they have a backlog built up of things they intend to blog on from the posting gap that will start to appear as next content) OR
They’re not currently in a position to do anything more but they intend being back at some point and want to say so OR
They want to finish the blog off tidily because their situation or wish to do it has changed since they started it OR
They’ve been meaning to take the blog down for ages, or transfer it somewhere else, or do something else substantive to it and haven’t got round to it or have been baffled trying to figure out how to actually achieve it and / or find the time for
The Perils of the Untended Blog
These probably weigh more with the authors than anyone else!!!
An un-updated blog has a slightly sad look about it, something started not currently maintained, for reasons that could be anything or nothing. Bit like a garden no one’s been in for a while that can be seen by passers-by.
Because most blogs are public. So who notices lack of up-dating isn’t immediately discernible, perhaps no one but the author, perhaps not. You might well never know. How does anyone interpret silence or omission of text? But someone, somewhere, probably has.
When is a blog an un-updated blog?
I don’t think there’s any standard answer to that at all if there’s no clues from the posts and you don't actually know the person. All you can do is look at the pattern of how regular or when posts have tended to be in past and when it was last up-dated. That probably gives a bit of a feel for what the standard rhythm is. We all have periods when we go slightly irregular because our routines and schedules have changed.
But it if tended to be every few weeks and that was a year ago it’s a fairly safe assumption!
My Busy Month (Honest Guv!)
Which brings me to the paragraph I meant to write at the top of this originally. It would basically have said:-
I’ve been engulfed for the last fortnight in preparing and writing a presentation for my ancient history life I’m giving tomorrow. Mostly finished in small hours of yesterday morning. Properly finished after tomorrow evening. Hurrah. Relief. Slump. Starting to feel vaguely human again.
Various work stuff around internal deadlines.
Finishing the Carnegie Shortlist in time re the Shadowing Group I’m in (as the winner is announced tomorrow). Hurrah hurrah, I got finished last week. Which is late for me.
The small matter of my CILIP Revalidation portfolio. I’m due again next month and still have some hopes of getting it all finished and bound in time to take it down next Monday when I’m in CILIP for a meeting anyway. That would mean could leave it all there a bit early in the relieved knowledge it’s assembled, finished, and out of my hands! If a thump of three copies landing on Reception desk is heard I’ll managed it and have arrived in the building…!!
Normal service shall resume... (shes says sounding like a tv transmitter fault!)
Yes, I have a backlog(!!) built up from my absence over the last few weeks…
And yes it's nagging at me...
So going to start gradually start posting it…
You have been warned…!
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