Unless I write this now

I may never write what I want to write now. So blooming obvious. So silly maybe. You see when I started blogging in 2005, I had an audience. I had one person I ‘knew’ would want to read whatever I’d write.

She wouldn’t bother reading me for another 25 years – that didn’t matter to me because all I needed was one human being. If there was one person interested, besides myself, that was enough.

I didn’t care who else read the blog. They would be welcome guests but I wouldn’t write for them. If I started writing for a wider audience I’d be distracted by thoughts that would slow me down.

My mother was still alive.
She wouldn’t even read my stuff and I didn’t mind that. My brothers & sisters, my wife, my ex-wife, my sons – none of them mattered. Of course they mattered. They might appear in the blog but I wouldn’t be worried about them.

An infant was the one person in the world that mattered to my blog. My daughter Grace who was born in August 2005. She was my audience. We were about to move to Cork Ireland. That’s why it was called “From Bath To Cork With Baby Grace”. Such an easy title to invent.

I was in Cafe Beva
in Glanmire this morning, talking with my best friend, talking about his wife. Her writing practices. They are a secret because I don’t want to run the risk that she might find out we were talking about her talent.

What matters
to this blog is that the conversation about one writer’s behaviour has influenced me to change – to stop not writing.

I don’t know who my audience is. It was easy in the old days, 15 years ago. I had confidence in what I was doing. I’ve lose that clarity. Whatever I wrote in that first iteration of this blog is done. My daughter knows enough of me that I don’t find it easy to imagine her reading this.

Without an audience,
I may give up. This may be a flash in a pan. A false dawn. Any appropriate cliche.

Who cares. The future isn’t here yet and I dabble in living in the NOW.

Postscript:
I’m not making time to add a photo to tart up this blogpost. I don’t care. I might do that later.