This is about Last Month when I wrote 31 blog posts - one on every August day, each about the preceding day - of 31 Yesterdays.
ground rules *
I wanted to write of daily passions, concerns and rages. A diary of sorts, one that took account of but was not about my present mood. The first thought had been to write a daily piece about The Day Before Yesterday but trying that proved to be so confusing that I settled for Yesterday(s).
Each post had to be short and manageable, and with Twitter's 142 character-limit example, I set a daily target of approx. 140 words.
what happened
More ground rules were needed but I didn't know it when I started out.
With FB etc. fit for the purpose I should have advertised my intent, and not doing so was an avoidable error.
Another mistake was not setting aside a regular time to write each post. I left that to chance and opportunity. I had the one-a-day deadline, but with no other structure the task lurked and preyed on my mind. It became a chore to fulfill that had each day beginning with a look backwards.
It played tricks on me . . . was I attempting insight, comedy or pathos? I found myself trying to find a sensation to spice each Yesterday.
I had figured 'What Is Yesterday Now?' but I didn't know what I was getting in to. The project consumed far more time and energy than I predicted.
It set traps and I fell into all of them.
I had to be careful not to write about Today, the day of writing.
It was hard not to refer forward from Yesterday through Today to Tomorrow, and harder not to dwell on the causes of Yesterday's action.
I was disheartened during the month and several times I thought of giving it up.
then what happened
The capture of brilliant moves and noteworthy events was in my mind, but there weren't many, if any, of either in a month of my yesterdays.
I come to realise that I'm not as stable as I'd thought, that my days are very uneven. I'm not as rational, considered or as spontaneous as I'd imagined. All about my yesterdays-all about me, and I find that I do have a focus - somehow, my time does produce something. I was part reassured by that normality.
How determined or capricious had been my intent? What would have happened had I got sick or had a crisis befallen me?
I have become more adept at posting up blog-posts although many Yesterdays tested me to write and bored me to read. 31 days straight - 31 posts. A post-a-day is self-entrapment. Some posts were very rough. Were there any good ones? There was little time to edit. As I became more assured in the habit, and more confident in the mechanics of posting, Yesterday got longer and gained pictures but was there a thread? . . . and that begs the obvious question: Why would I expect anyone to want to read them? Blogger and FB friends might well have hidden me from news-feeds for over-productivity.
My answer is always the same to that: If I don't do it, nobody will have the chance and it's up to you (me) whether they get to read it or not.
(And then I wrote this.)
Yesterday :01 August 2010
*I hoped to find a voice in the 'playful environment of language: irony, flirtation and ambiguity', and weave a spell of clarification. The Academic.
