Seven year itch

Right. Make or break time for the blog.

It's coming up for seven years since I started my Warrior blog, and never, not even in those early months, have I been so poor at updating it as I have been in the past six months. I really don't know why - it can't just be the change of job and of location, because that's happened twice before since I started blogging. It's not that life has got that much duller; OK, it's been winter, and I'm a long way from the boat, but again, that's hardly unprecedented. It's not that I've been too busy, nor that I have nothing to say, either. There are no negative reasons; nothing that has prevented me from blogging.  I can only say that I just haven't felt sufficiently strongly motivated to do it.

I've been engaging with the internet as a whole a lot less in recent months. I retired from CanalWorld well before Christmas, have only popped back once, very briefly (in the hope of discovering that Chertsey was made of Sheffield steel, but it was not to be), and I'm not missing it. I mean, I know there are things I'm missing out on by not looking at it, just as there are with TV, but in both cases I just can't face engaging with the whole thing just to avoid missing one or two nuggets.

I still read and enjoy the blogs in my blogroll - it's me clicking through that every day that's probably stopped my web ranking plummetting into double figures - but that's about it (in fact I'm missing hearing from Sickle and Darley...). It was starting to seem as if I'd just outgrown blogging; been there, done that, exhausted the possibilities... That the blog had come to the end of its natural life. Maybe there's a reason for the seven year itch; maybe things do go in natural seven year cycles... I was about to post to say as much. And yet, and yet...

Seven years is a long time. For a blog, it's pretty ancient. Granny Buttons (after a lot longer) has retired from the fray; many others, less long lived, have been and gone. But Warrior/Chertsey has been going for nearly seven years, making it, even if I say so myself, one of the longest established canal boating blogs. It almost feels as if that in itself is a reason to keep it going.

And, as the original title of this post was going to be, 'tis the season - starting with the HNBC AGM last Saturday - when we really start thinking about boating again after the winter. Indeed, in less than three weeks we'll be doing it again, as we head off up to the Port for Easter. Jim is already hard at work getting Chertsey ready whilst I'm sitting here at my desk in Sheffield. There's that to talk about, the AGM, the Lucky Ducks' new boat, and Jim's birthday treat this weekend... not to mention my latest Campaign for Decent Tea.

And I do enjoy it. I just need to get back into the habit. Keep reading....