tide and time

It has been, to the day, two and a half years since I started Ocean. I have bragged incessantly about my commitment to daily posting. That is what Ocean is in my mind: a place where I make a daily appearance. No matter what.

Daily blogging has been good for me, for sure. It lightened the drama when houses weren’t selling, when passports got lost, when rogue cowboys lead me into swamps, when obnoxious diners in restaurants threatened to wreck great evenings. And it made me think hard about how someone else would regard an event noted here, on Ocean.

People say that blogging is self indulgent. I don’t see it. Getting up at 5 to fit it in. Looking relentlessly for just one person who would be willing to lend me a phone line. Finding themes. Editing like crazy after three glasses of wine. Taking 100 photos and liking none of them. Sullen moods, blank minds – I’ve known them all. Daily blogging reminds me of getting up at night to quiet a screaming baby. You want to do it well and sometimes you just can’t but you're committed to trying.

The forthcoming trip up to the Canadian Rockies will break my two and a half year posting trend. I’ve got two hikes before me, each lasting three days. [In between: a long long bath, great food and wine, a down comforter… mmmm, I can dream, can’t I?] And so I thought I’d reconsider how I handle in general potential interruptions in blogging.

One thing I do know: I don’t want Ocean to become irregular. I want planned outages, noted in the sidebar. And so it will be thus: breaks will happen, but they will be announced. [Look to the left: I've done it already!]

Of course, I don’t have to do it that way. Of course, no one will care if I skip days, weeks even. But I want predictability and regularity. I want the challenge to be what it has been: to stick with what I set out to do. Keep to a schedule. Edit when I am too tired to edit. Write about a day with some anxiety about how it all comes out at the end.