Blogging Much Less

I used to be known for being prolific. When that happens, you want to keep up appearances, you want to keep showing how great you are at churning out content. Not that quantity equals quality, but I'm happy with most of what I've written on this site. I haven't lost interest, I've changed changed my approach to it.

I used to want to be the best blogger out there. I wanted to get the best interviews, write the best content, and be some kind of authority on creativity and the world of independent film. There's nothing wrong with goals like that, except that they become extremely pressurising. 

For all my adult life, people have asked me, "has watching films been ruined for you because you also work in film?" The answer was always no. Until more recently, when it became true. I wasn't loving movies. In fact, often I actively didn't want to sit through them. 

We love films because we get to escape. We get to be entertained. We get to make new best friends and enemies for two hours. We get to be a part of something. But I wasn't part of it. I guess you could say; I was distracted from it.

Distracted because; I'd always want to write, always want to have something to say. Always want to put my 'kid in the front row' spin on what the film was about, or what was going on in the industry. These thoughts would be rampaging through my brain during every film I watched.

Creativity is fragile. About 2% of artists I know are actively creating. The rest are trapped. It's like a wrestler has them in a headlock and won't let go. I was getting like that. It's not just because of the blog, but it's a good example of it. It was the same in all my creative endeavours. Passion is good. But sometimes it leads to obsessiveness. It leads to habitually trying to write even when there's nothing to say, even when it's time to sleep, even when it's time to turn up somewhere for a friend or do something with a loved one. Your brain is elsewhere, on your work, on your ideas.

But your ideas aren't even there. The ones you force out suck. You get too obsessed with trying to be productive. You end up bashing your head against a wall a million times over. 

So I stopped. For a while, I totally stopped watching films. Now, I'm loving them again, and I don't feel the pressure to blog about them, to have something unique or witty or interesting to say. 

The greatest thing about watching a movie is watching a movie. 

I no longer want to be the best blogger or any such thing. Turns out there are hundreds of great film bloggers on the internet. The pie is not so small that I need to be near the top, I'm just one slice that you get to sample when I'm in the mood to write and you're in the mood to read. That's enough for me, that's why I'm here. 

I've watched tons of films recently and I feel no need to write about them, which is refreshing. I'm watching films just to watch films, the way it's meant to be. 

I've lost my obsessive need to be productive, to be competitive. Now I'm just loving what I love; which is movies.