How could the big anniversary post NOT happen when it’s a double anniversary convergence? Really, there was no way to stop it.
This Hadn’t Been the Plan
I hadn’t planned on doing anything big here in the blog for either post #100 or the second anniversary. I figured I’d throw in a little self-indulgent celebratory paragraph between the title and first subheading, and then ignore it thereafter, going onto whatever was the topic at hand. (The intended topic for post #100 has been relocated to post #102.) This was the plan for both #100 and for the 2nd anniversary.
It wasn’t just that I hadn’t planned on devoting a full post to this stuff – I’d actively planned NOT to. Post #100 should have been done ages ago. The fact that it’s only now finally coming out is embarrassing. And the whole second year of the blog was . . . let’s just say ‘disappointing’.
Even when I realized the opportunity to bind post #100 and the 2nd anniversary into a single unit, I wasn’t planning on doing anything more than a simple intro paragraph.
So, what changed?
Mainly, it occurred to me that an anniversary post didn’t need to focus entirely on where the blog has gone – it can just as easily look forward at where it’s going. I’ve had a few changes in mind for awhile now, and I think that maybe by posting an intention to implement them there’ll be a better chance I’ll actually stick to them.
A Quick Chunk of Backstory
Okay, I’ll try and make this slice of personal history as concise as possible: In 1989, I accidentally wrote a novel. (Whoops!) Sat down to write an original short story for a friend’s small press publication, and didn’t type ‘The End’ until I’d written over 77,000 other words before it.
In 1990 I began work on a ‘monthly’ (it averaged more like bimonthly from start to finish, but not that cleanly) Max Headroom fanzine.
From 1991 to the beginning of 1993 I didn’t do a damn thing.
[Okay, I did some small stuff. I wrote a few things for other peoples fanzines. I started writing a few stories that were doomed to incompletion. And, of course, somewhere during that time period was the stuff with Dot (not her real name). Which, in addition to being a catastrophic pseudo-relationship, also managed to produce a doomed-to-rejection Star Trek-The Next Generation screenplay.]
Yes, I was having medical problems, but there were long stretches of time where my word count was zero, and the health stuff really only counted for a diminished output, not a ceased output. So, I was excuseless.
Then, over the course of about a week in 1993, nearly everybody I knew got on my case for not writing anything. To this day I don’t know if it was extended coincidence, or an elaborately planned episodic intervention. But it caused me to start a new zine.
No real consistent theme or topic. Just whatever was on my mind at the time, I guess. Over the next four years, I produced somewhere between 36 and 39 issues (depending on how you count them). Just over half a million words.
From there I moved on to a different zine, from there I moved to an e-zine, from there I moved to a blog, and so on and so forth. Several blogs and a couple of screen name changes later, and here I am. (Hi!)
Blog! Do it! Blog!
So the posts on Time Delay have been embarrassingly few and far between here of late. It’s like I’m not doing a damn thing. Oh, sure, a rare post here and there, but nothing worth bragging about. Hell, nothing even worth admitting to.
I like to place the blame squarely on the massive pulmonary embolism back in October that filled both my lungs with blood clots. Nearly killed me. Landed my ass in a hospital bed for a week. Put me out of commission for a long while. (Made me miss Darklady’s Halloween party – now THAT’S how you know it was serious!)
But in all honestly, I’d been in a posting slump even before that, and that whole thing was long enough ago that I should be firmly back in the blogging saddle again.
The last week in July, my obsessive compulsive brain realized that the 2nd anniversary was approaching AND that I was just a post away from the 100th. And it started screaming inside my skull. “Two posts by August 12th!” It was insistent.
So now I had this goal of getting posts #99 before and #100 by the 12th of August. Plus I had the accompanying fear that I’d fail at even that simple but seemingly vital goal.
And then . . . one day last week I logged into Twitter and found a DM (direct message) from an old friend of mine with whom I’ve all but lost touch. (Someone who I’d completely lost touch with before I found him on Twitter and we started following one another..)
The message was a mere four words long. (Four words, and three exclamation points.) I don’t know whether he was suddenly curious about what was going on in my life, or if he was struck by the urge to play Jiminy Cricket, chirping conscience-chatter in my ear. But whatever his reason, the writerly ‘call-to-arms’ from out of the blue added fuel to the fire of my ‘must blog OR ELSE’ mentality.
Sitting there at the library, reading that short little message, I had a flashback to 1993 when he (and practically everyone else I knew at the time) told me I needed to write something.
Oh, and the Twitter DM? “Blog! Do it! Blog!”
So here I am. Blogging.
Looking Back on a Disappointing Year Two
I wrote and posted 81 entries in the first year of the blog. Year two brought us a mere 18.
I suppose it’s lovely for symmetry, following 81 with 18, but it’s not all that great for volume.
Once again, the report on this year’s KinkFest proved problematic. (Part one is up on the blog, but doesn’t really cover the event all that much. Part two exists only as a placeholder. And as for the rest of it . . . well, we’ll get to that later on in this post.)
There’ve actually been a bunch of things I wanted to post about whose topical expiration date has come and gone. Other event reports. Not to mention an intended multipart post on my whole medical ordeal.
Looking Forward to a Magnificent Year Three
Year three on the other hand (he says confidently) is going to be nothing short of fantastic!
Changes
Obviously, the first change from it’s current condition is frequency of posting. I’ve decided I’d like to post a little more often than almost never. My thought here is an official policy of ‘at least once a week’, with an actual weekly goal of two posts. Maybe a third post when I’ve specifically got a third thing to say, but not as a regular thing. (I’ve noticed that posting three times a week for a month or two is the best way to drain me of all interest in posting more than ‘rarely’.)
I’d like to put some more effort into the ‘second draft’ stage of the blog. I still get complaints that my posts are too long, which is something I’m never quite sure how to fix. (And no, the advice “Make them shorter” is not at all helpful. Thanks, though.)
In addition to posting miscellaneous and scattered topics all willy-nilly, I’d also like to start posting some stuff within structured categories.
The next Time Delay post will be the first post in it’s own category, for reasons that should become obvious once you read it. And I’ve got other categories in mind, besides.
‘Fetish and Fantasy’ seems like a decent category for (and an excuse to finally write) some of the posts on various fetishes that I’ve been putting off, seemingly forever. (The foot fetish stuff, more info on clown fetishism, and so on.) Plus, some of the classic fantasy scenarios that especially turn me on (and some not-so-classic fantasies that turn me on even more).
I’m thinking about a category tentatively entitled ‘Blog Therapy’. I’d like to use my two or three human readers and seemingly infinite number of Japanese spambot readers as a therapist, and just talk stuff out.
[Oh, by the way – I’d like to apologize to Time Delay’s Japanese spambot audience for the fact that I keep disallowing your comments. But the sites you link to are all blocked by the library’s filters, and since the majority of your messages are ‘cleverly’ clickable links . . . I just feel uncomfortable allowing your posts, not knowing where you’re sending people. Sorry, Spambots.]
And then – (okay, deep breath Zeitgeist, you can do this) – I want a category called ‘Erotic Fiction’. I want to start writing short stories that are either erotic or pornographic in nature (that’s step one, and it’s a BIG step considering my writer’s block problems regarding fiction), and then post them here in the blog.
Other categories exist, but have yet to make themselves known to me. Isn’t that always the case?
The other change in mind is to some of the topics that have been sitting on the schedule for awhile. One day, while staring at the list of posts I needed to write, it occurred to me that both the KinkFest Report and the 10th Annual Portland Masturbate-a-Thon Report would have to include some hefty chunks of text on foot fetish. This made me start musing off on tangents, and the next thing I knew, I was preparing an alternate list of blog posts based on commonalities of content within some of the posts I was finding it difficult to write.
I’m still planning on (belatedly, at this point) covering this past KinkFest. It’s just that I’m no longer planning to do it in something called ‘The KinkFest Report’. Instead, I’ll be inserting little chunks and snippets of what went on at KinkFest into other posts, like “Sucking on Sexy Bare Toes” and “Why I Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Run Around Naked”. (Among others.)
Still No Cake, Ice Cream, Or Dancing Girls
When I wrote the self indulgent pieces for both post #50 and the 1st anniversary, I made noises about wanting the blog to be so popular and successful that when I hit the next big anniversary (which would have been either of the two that combined to form this thing), I wanted cake, ice cream, and dancing girls. Or strippers. Or prostitutes. (Not real picky, me.)
Maybe next time. Post #150? Or #200, maybe? Or the 3rd anniversary?
Hey, the traditional 3rd anniversary gift (yeah, wedding, but still) is leather – and if August 12th falls in the middle of Oregon Leather Pride Week again next year . . . hmm . . .
Cake, ice cream, dancing girls, and leather bdsm gear (to maybe use ON the dancing girls).
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