Stephen Hackett briefly discussed some changes to 512 Pixels on last week’s episode of Connected. Some of those thoughts temporarily live on his Now page. Here’s the main thrust:
… my hope is to have fewer — but more meaningful — things in the RSS feed in 2026.
He also mentioned putting this on the Now page rather than in a separate post because he can’t bring himself to blog about his own blogging. Few people read my site, so I have no such reluctance.
Stephen’s decision reflects my own worries and thought process about my blog over many years. I vacillate between believing that what I write here is insufficient or uninteresting most of the time, and knowing that if I didn’t hold myself to a weekly post, I may cease to write with any regularity, thus negating this blog’s main purpose. True, these concerns are somewhat unwarranted when it’s a pet project rather than a major source of income, as it is with Stephen. But it’s worth considering my goals and whether my current writing routine aids my improvement.
Does requiring fifty ideas each year keep me hungry and curious, or does it weaken the average output? Would I take more time per post if I reduced the frequency to fortnightly or monthly, or would each piece sneak up on me and result in a hasty essay that reads like a sophomore’s harried submission before a midnight deadline? If I removed any expectation of regular posting, would that free me up to do more, or would it free me up to do less?
I don’t have a clear answer to any of these. Continuing to post weekly is due to inertia, rather than an explicit decision or belief that it’s somehow better for my advancement as a writer. It’s also a crutch I continue providing myself: if this week’s post isn’t that good, well, it was a busy week, and I had to rush it. I’ll spend more time on the next one. Were I to remove that crutch, I may quickly find out that more time wasn’t the problem. I could also pleasantly surprise myself, but fear is an excellent deterrent to trying a new approach.
This dynamic is similar to large corporations whose bulky masses are weighed down by years of processes built with good intentions but, once in place, are rarely reconsidered or modernized. The issues with any current systems are understood and under control, so why change to something that could be better but could also be oh, so much worse? Predictability is safe, even if it’s a predictably so-so outcome. Anything short of utter failure is tolerable.
That doesn’t mean change is the answer, either. An old routine could exist because it’s fundamental to current success. I don’t stop taking magnesium because I’ve stopped having leg cramps, since I recognize that the magnesium was pretty darn vital in handling that problem.
Here’s where I’ve landed so far: I need to balance my desire to use this blog as a vehicle for improving my writing with its utility and value as an external journal that captures all my weird interests and rabbit holes. I’d rather use it for both, posting fun and intriguing tidbits I discover while pushing on bigger projects that require and deserve consistent attention.
That means I won’t necessarily post at (almost) the exact same time each Monday morning, nor will I purposefully hold onto topics and links because I need to “pad” my schedule down the line. I will attempt to anchor this site around key ideas and projects for which I will hold myself accountable, and bop in with other thoughts as I have them. I’ll can my more-or-less defunct fiction site, allowing all my writing projects to exist in one place.
It will take time to form new habits and treat this site differently than I have the past seven(!) years. It may not be obvious, even to me, that I’ve decided to change until a couple of months from now. I hope it comes with a sense of empowerment to chase down bigger projects, while also not ignoring a silly side thought because it doesn’t feel worthy of a weekly post. Here’s to finding a better balance.