Internet, I have sinned. It's been eight days since my last blog post.

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Internet, I have sinned. It's been eight days since my last blog post. Oh, believe me, I've got excuses aplenty. Real Life intervened, of course. Quite a slice of Real Life; everything from absolute bliss, wonderfully soaking up every moment of my time, to the not-so-nice. Neither extreme seemed particularly receptive to saying "Hey, you know, I've committed myself to posting, put life on TiVo pause, please, I need to go and write." I'm reading; actually, I'm more than reading. I've been given an opportunity to try my hand at editing, and so far, I'm enjoying it. As a matter of fact, I'm probably enjoying the novel a little bit too much, and I have to keep checking myself to decide whether I'm enjoying this latest scene too much to notice whether that word should be hyphenated or not.

Depending on what dictionary you dig out, the doldrums will be defined something along the lines of "a period of stagnation or slump". Interestingly, do you know where the word comes from? It's actually a maritime term for the winds (or sometimes, the lack thereof) close to the equator, between the tropics. Without getting too fancy, since there's more heat at the equator, the pressure is low, and the winds from the northern and southern hemispheres meet. As a result, it was not unusual for ships to be stuck there for days or even weeks before there'd be wind to fill their sails.

However, it seems that this biorhythmic behavior, oscillations in our ability to blog, disturbances in the Force, whatever you want to call them, seem to happen to us all. I've seen blogging buddies write sensational posts that go viral, get overwhelmed with comments, and then proceed with 23 follow-up posts the same day, Conversely, I see a lot of people pick some days where, quite simply, they go out of their way to do something different. It's usually a Friday. You know the ones, the #fictionfriday or the #fridayflash or the photo post invitations. They're a wonderful way of getting around the problem of having nothing to write, or a more impressive engagement with a pint of Boddington's. Make somebody else do all the work instead. Yes, I know, I'm being facetious. These are precisely the sort of blogging quests that build communities and help us all get to know each other, and that's a lot of what blogging is about. None of us can possibly do this in a vacuum.

So, anyway, I decided to have a look around to find a theme, a topic, something that I could do regularly, periodically, to guarantee I had a regular source of posting topics. I was mooching around Google Analytics and found, believe it or not, that somebody had managed to find their way to my blog by searching for the exact phrase "you looked over my shoulder". How thoroughly curious - not only that they had this exact phrase in mind, but also that their search led them here? I don't even know or remember if I've ever written those words in a blog. Well, I'm sure the searcher ended up disappointed, and didn't find what they were looking for. I felt a little bit sorry for them. Ah ha! Perhaps this is an opportunity! It could be search engine optimization in reverse. Instead of trying to get buzzwords into blog posts, why not see what brings people to visit, and write articles for them? It could be #searchenginesunday, perhaps. So, kind visitor, I want to thank you for the day that "you looked over my shoulder". That's the title I'm going to try for my next post. Likewise, there's been an irregular feature I've gone round here which, for want of a better name, I entitled Nerdy Number Corner. I'm a mathematician, after all, and I suffer from some geeky fascination with the magic of numbers. Maybe that's something I should also do on a particular day of the week. Maybe that will become #mathematicalmonday... hey, there's an idea. I think, now, I'm beginning to see a pattern. This is what I've been lacking - an established routine.

I saw this coming. This time last week, I opened up a new file in a text editor and began writing me a browser home page. Nothing too sophisticated, just a simple "todo" list; things like a list of links to the message boards, the online communities, and so on, that I should be visiting, should be promoting, and above all should be interacting with. It's a routine, yes, but, given enough time, it will become a habit. That's my daily schedule sorted out. Maybe I have to do the same with my weekly schedule, too. The word routine always has such negative connotations, and make things sound like a rut, but it looks like some discipline is necessary. Let's start with a good habit.

Here's a far more entertaining confessional.

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Losing Momentum in Fitness and Blogging

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It was exceptionally tough this morning, pedaling that stationary bike. I'd watch the display in front of me, the terrain scrolling towards me like some slow-motion version of Scramble. Random hills proceed across the screen, every once in a while, one reaches right to the top of the display, an absolute skyscraper to pedal over. Getting over these is a question of mind over matter, because the display scrolls every ten seconds anyway; it doesn't matter if I pedal harder or faster; it doesn't matter if I stop pedaling completely; I'll get over this hill. However, if I don't keep my momentum going, it won't do me any good. Why are things so tough for me this morning?

Because I didn't go to the gym yesterday. We took our first day off yesterday morning; we had lots of reasons, lots of justifications. We deserved it. We needed snuggles. J had a hairdresser's appointment. We had a couple of errands to run. We had to go see a friend in the hospital later that evening. We quite simply didn't feel like going, and we paid the penalty for it today. There's a discipline involved, particularly at this early stage. It doesn't matter how often I weigh myself, or measure my waist. At the moment the biggest difference I'm going to see is whether I get on the scales before or after I visit the toilet. I've got to keep focused, keep going, because if I don't keep going, then C won't keep going, and if C doesn't keep going, I won't end up going, either.

But I've got to get through today, get through this thirty minutes. I'm visualizing what's going on inside this machine, a machine full of flywheels and magnetic resistance and belts and pulleys and all sorts of other junk. I just have to keep it moving. I have to keep going. If I can do that, then I'll make it; and I have to make it, I owe it to myself to do so. Another skyscraper left behind; there's another on the distant horizon, approaching. Let's cross that one when I get to it. Let's keep this exercise routine going. There's no sense for one day to derail the whole thing. And I'll know about it; I'll ache all day today, I'll feel the strain just like I did the first day I came to the gym after all those days off before.

OK, now the evening comes, and the blogging rituals. I created me a page over the weekend, listing my routine, the order I should do things in, how best to stay focused, how to keep up with my reading lists, comment on friends' pages, get some views, check out some stats. I haven't written a post since Sunday; the difficult one, the anniversary post. It seems like I've lost subscribers. It seems like I've only had about three page views today. What's happening? I've lost momentum here, too. I haven't been keeping up with my posts. I wrote an opinion piece; those are always good for traffic; and then a personal piece; those are always very satisfying. But then, nothing at all. I took some time off over the last couple of days; I had lots of reasons, lots of justifications. Appointments and errands and lack of computer time and I quite simply didn't feel like it. There's a discipline involved, particularly at this early stage, and it doesn't matter how many times I look at my traffic stats they are not going to radically change unless I keep producing content. I've got to keep focused, keep going, because if I don't keep going, then the chances of C and I actually settling down to write our novel will be pretty slim.

So I've got to put up a post today, get through this case of not knowing what to write about. I just have to keep it moving. And I'll know about it; I'll ache for quite a while over this post, and I'll feel the strain just like I did when I first began these pages. Let's get moving again.

Three Blogging Services That Impressed Me Lately

A little while ago, I ran into this blog about the 5 stages of a blogger's life. I must admit, at the time, I wondered if I'd ever make it out of level 1, in fact, I'm still wondering about that, Shortly afterwards, a follow-up post appeared with a theory about why people stop blogging. To put it simply, it becomes necessary to become a part of a community, to flourish, to realize that the words are not simply being sounded out in an echo chamber. There's plenty of services out there that are chasing you down, offering to help publicize, to link you, to connect you with the rest of the blogging world; however, it might be worth pausing there for a moment. Recently I have tried a couple of services whose initial impressions on me were not good; these are quite well-known services, and among those that spring immediately to mind when you consider blog promotion. Perhaps it was only to be expected that my experience would be unsatisfactory. It occurred to me that the problem with these services was that they were gaining more from me being a member than I was from them; they were getting advertising views for teeth whitening and online gambling venues, while I was getting little or nothing in return except for a great deal of frustration.

Fortunately, there are some impressive services out there. In stark contrast to the big guys, the heavy hitters, I've recently had some excellent experiences with three much smaller communities that I will quite happily recommend. Perhaps it is due to the community size. Perhaps it is something to do with me being closer to their membership, perhaps in terms of experience or familiarity with the issues that are being discussed; although, perhaps when you read about these three services, you might be quickly able to identify what it is about them that singles them out.

• I first heard about Blogger Talk when Rose DesRochers tweeted a link to an article I had written for syndication, reposted on the Blogger Talk site. This was my first experience with article republishing and introduced me to what I discovered was a very strong and healthy blogger community of discussion forums, support, downloads and assistance. The atmosphere is close and friendly; I'll always have Rose to thank for a boost in getting targeted readers to that article and shown me what a difference exposure to the right audience can make.
• Expose Your Blog is in fact a service I discovered while on Blogger Talk. Don Bell was introducing himself in the forums, and Don impressed me immediately with his combination of sincerity and general goodwill to the entire  blogging community. Don's site came about after several former members of Blog Explosion were dissatisfied after that site apparently... erm... imploded. Expose Your Blog is reminiscent of the older traffic exchanges where sites are viewed in rotation in exchange for page views on your own site. I must admit I was somewhat dubious about the effectiveness of this, but I have found myself reading and commenting on several of the sites and having that favor likewise returned, so the concept definitely works. if that is not enough, EYB boasts a gorgeous forum and, believe it or not, an online radio station...
• Blogger Luv is a blogger community site in every sense of the word, offering friends and followers like the many social networking sites out there, all with a blogging angle. Bloggers are encouraged to share their sites and experiences from day one, the atmosphere is friendly and good-naturedly competitive, mainly because of the infectious enthusiasm of John Sullivan. If John doesn't poke you in the ribs within the first day of your membership, I'd be surprised. The site's own blog offers interesting stories and articles, but the most fascinating area for me has been the community pages, where links can be offered and voted up much in the way of StumbleUpon or Reddit. This way the community decides for themselves which articles are worthy of sharing, and the articles I have found there have been most useful.

Did you figure out what it was that these three services offered that made them stand out from the rest? It's right there; each of them is represented by a real person; has presented a personal angle, a very human aspect, in a real community. That is the important thing, none of us is doing any of this in a vacuum. We depend on each other, rely on each other, to grow, to learn, to thrive, to share a little bit of "luv" every once in a while. Without it, we are not likely to get very far; the community aspect is important for any of us to survive. Let us make the most of each other's company.