A two week long absence explained.

So, anybody who has been watching relatively closely over the last month or so will have noticed that I have gone off the grid, so to speak.

I had a manically productive phase which lasted about two weeks, and then, about three weeks ago, petered out to nothing. Since then I have been a stranger to the WordPress community; I have gone dark, gone AWOL, gone to ground.

This is the first post I’ve published in about two and a half weeks, and although I had conceded that there was no way I could sustain the level of productivity I maintained over the two week phase prior to that, when I was publishing at least twice daily; I had hoped to be able to maintain some kind of regularity with my blogging.

I wanted to try and publish a poem every other day, and at least two articles a week. I have failed miserably. This is mildly irritating, as I can claim absolutely no reason other than my own laziness and lack of drive. I have been faffing about, languishing in my own unfocused state of funk..

I may have done a bit of work on the book, and finished a chapter which was slowly driving me to desperation, but I haven’t been working at anywhere near full capacity, and that fact is annoying me.

WordPress is also annoying me. During my two week period of high activity I was averaging about 50 views a day, which was a lot for me- although it must also be stated that I was also working on WordPress about five hours a day over that same period.

A small part of me was hoping that after working so hard for two weeks my traffic levels would receive some kind of boost; I was hoping my average figures would all increase, even if it was only by a small amount. This hasn’t happened, and I suspect that if I wanted this to happen I would have to work 7 hour days on WordPress for about a year, minimum.

It has become very clear to me that traffic, views, likes and follows are all directly proportional to hours spent working on WordPress: the more you post the more traffic you receive, and the more time you spend reading other people’s blogs, and liking and commenting on other people’s blogs, the more traffic you receive.

Therefore, over the last three weeks, when I have effectively been dead to WordPress, my average daily views have dropped down to under ten.

I knew this was going to happen, and I knew that the only way to retain those high traffic figure was to literally eat, breathe and drink WordPress. It’s still annoying though, because it indicates what I really already knew; building up a noteworthy online presence is going to take an inordinately large amount of work.

It’s not impossible, and it’s not beyond my capabilities; I just need to maintain a certain level of work, and a certain number of hours worked daily and weekly. At the moment I am not disciplined and focused enough to keep up the regularity required to build solid and permanent connections on this site.

This level of commitment has been alien to me for a long time. I have been unemployed for twelve years, and have only done volunteer roles and part time jobs. The basic and regular practise of getting up every morning at the same time and working on the same project for five out of seven days is not normal to me.

I will work really well for a couple of weeks, and then stop for whatever reason. I’ll then spend some time mulling over whatever happened to knock me out of my productive flow, and then slowly work back up again. Learning to manage and deal with the issues which affect me, whilst maintaining productivity and meaningful activity is a crucial aspect of my current recovery.

So I shall effectively be using this blog as a means of getting me back into that regular working/writing weekly cycle, as well as a medium to improve my writing skills, promote awareness surrounding mental illness issues, and promote my as yet uncompleted book.

This blog is going to be my space to develop; my space to grow and elaborate and extrapolate..

I know that I cannot maintain seven hour working days on WordPress, and moreover I know that this blog was only meant to be a side-project! It should only play second fiddle to the masterpiece I am coming up with on the side.

However, I can maintain sensible and realistic WordPress work levels, and maintain the practise of publishing regularly.

This post is going to be the start of my big calm period. I shall publish regularly, but not obsess over every post and every stat. The majority of my time and effort will go to the book, and I shall use this space as a medium to improve my writing skills and my ability to elucidate my observations and ideas.

I hope very much that you will stick around long enough to see all my plans and projects come into fruition!

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