This Writing Life: Eight Years and Counting

I never remember the blogiversary of Mikocheni Report quite in time. This has become a yearly tradition, along with the making of promises to improve the blog both aesthetically and content-wise in the coming year.

So: I promise to improve the blog in the coming year. It'll look better and have increased and improved content. No, for real this time. :)

Eight years and counting? Folks, I didn't think this thing would last this long. As a long-time blog enthusiast with a number of blogs that I check on religiously, I was mentally prepared for the slump. Personal blogging is like some kind of mad ultra-marathon that starts out fine and ends up with you limping on busted up content hoping you won't soil yourself too badly/die before you reach your goal. My goal is pretty much ten years, because that's a nice round number and would put me in the league of hard-core non-giver-uppers who hit the decade mark, statistics or popularity be damned. 

Recently someone commented on the fact that I don't blog as much as I used to, and it is patently true. The answer I gave was that I am bored with my own opinion- too much of it has been nothing but politics lately and I already do that for the East African. In a sense, the column that was partly born out of the blog has cannibalized it's sister's energies and left the blog weaker as a result. 

I want to go back  to doing much more interesting stuff like covering cultural events, food and cuisine, random topics, esoteric stuff, musings about development and Africanism and philosophy and things. But we're mid-marathon here, people, and I won't lie: wheeeeeeew. That's the only sound that seems appropriate. My brain is beat up and straining. 

The slump that long-term bloggers encounter is that period of time when other things take center stage, when blogging isn't what it used to be and the passion wanes and you end up trickling down to a very occasional post. But that's what separates the mad from the bad: we just keep going, even when the statistics function of the blog keeps taunting you to throw in the towel. There. Is. Still. Work. To. Be. Done. 

So: thank you readers for still showing up to read when I show up to write. It means a lot, the occasional comment or criticism- they are the equivalent of a protein bar along the gruelling way. It means that this project hasn't devolved into just one big yell into The Void. And that, folks, helps to keep the blog going. 

For year nine I promise (ahem) to have ambitions to make the blog prettier and to blog more frequently across a broader range of topics. I promise I won't necessarily achieve all of that because life gets in the way a lot these days. The one promise that I will keep is that I'll keep showing up, being cantankerous or tender or pseudo-intellectual or uncertain or oversharing. Even if its not as often as I should. Deal? 

Onwards hey! There's a couple of months to climb before next April.