theGesturalist

I’ve recently noticed this recurring experience and I’m not sure what all to make of it – maybe nothing.

There are so many blogs on finding inspiration, sticking with your craft, how to build a ‘sustainable writing practice’ and so on. Occasionally I find one that’s great, full of insight and inspiration and I get excited. I bookmark it even, and a few days later I decide to go check out what the author has been up to recently. What is new in their life? How consistent are they really? I navigate to the page, everything looks the same as I left it. I look at the date on the most recent article and it slaps me right in the face: September 2021 (anywhere within 1 to 3 years removed from the onset of the pandemic).

It seems to me there was a great creative surge, people were having genuine moments of revelation, and then what happened? The economy got a bit scarier, certainly – jobs started ordering employees back into the office. These routines that had been the whole premise of the blog were idly pushed aside as “real life” came back.

I suppose it bums me out because there were some really great enclaves that just disappeared. Thinking people who went back to thinking about other things. A few voices carried on, but it turned out that dedication and keeping up the routine were not the primary correlating factors in what made a blog or writer great. Some of them were great and now they are gone. Some of them were proper shit and they continue to be successful because of that dedication.

And hey, good for the resilient shit, I suppose. But I want the brilliant ones back.

– Which Pseudonym Am I Today?