The Four Father

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?

I have been crazy busy at work, that’s true.  This was a project started while unemployed, so there was really little surprise that production would slow once back to work.  But still, it’s been over a month.  That’s just not acceptable, election and storm coverage or not.

And then there are the titular Four Children.  Two of them play soccer every weekend.  All four of them need to be fed, bathed, clothed, and, best of all, played with.  Between all these things and work, I have found myself on many nights sitting down to write and ended up instead playing addictive little games like Turbo Golf or Bubble Shooter.  I’m awesome at both, for what it’s worth.  But they are mindless and I can basically shut down and do those while watching some television.  With so precious little down time, I took what I could get.

Every day, though, I would promise myself I would write something.  Then I started promising myself I would get it done on the weekend.  And then next weekend.  And then suddenly forty-something days have gone by and this thing here is collecting dust.

I hate being a cliche.  So many people starts these things with big ideas, go gung ho for a few weeks or months, and then it all just tapers off.  I knew this going in and swore that wouldn’t happen to me.  It did, though.  It did.

It’s all about what I have termed “blogger guilt.”  You launch, people start following you, and then it turns into an obligation.  You feel guilty for building these big gaps.  For me, the wider the gap became, the more it became like something I had to do than something I wanted to do.  It became a task.

Occasionally, I get invited to blogger events in which someone is showcasing something.  I went to see The Oogieloves, if you will recall, on that sort of invite.  I turn a bunch down if they don’t fit with what I generally write about (when I write) but will go to those that seem to be a possible fit. I went to one of these on Friday.

Admittedly, part of me felt a bit like a faker.  Was I really a blogger if I didn’t blog?  I nonetheless was intrigued by the pitch of these folks debuting their Woven app for mobile phones.  It is, at its most basic, an aggregator of all your on-line photos.  It is, in reality more than that, but we’ll get back to it in a moment.

After the presentation, I had a chance to really meet some of the nice folks behind its creation.  Steve Jungmann and James Gardner in particular were great to talk to.  Steve and I talked about blogging in general and the opportunities like these that get forwarded to me.  I thought this one was a fit because a blog without pictures is like Christmas without presents.  Our conversation then turned to the more general.  I commented that, as I said in my first ever post almost a year ago, starting a blog was the modern day equivalent of writing the Great American Novel.  Steve shared that he had actually written a novel during a period of unemployment all his own.  It is set to publish soon.

In the end, the three of us spoke at length during the evening and it was about much more than just apps and writing.  The one thing I came away with was the desire to write here again just for the sake of writing and not because of some artificial deadline I made for myself.  It was James who posed the simply (probably rhetorical) question of “who am I dong this for?”

I think the answer is “me.”  Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy, extremely so, to have all of you along for the ride.  But I’m not in this for the money, because there isn’t much of any to speak of.  It’s not for the fame (hah!), I get more notice when I drive a truck around in bad weather for WHDH-TV than I will ever get here. I do it because I like to write and I feel as though I have a story or two to tell.  I do it because, if I don’t, I end up posting 1000 word comments on someone’s Facebook feed just to get it out of me.  I do it because, when it comes down to it, it’s fun.

So I’m back.  I’ll make no promises on frequency, because I’ll just break them.  I don’t count this as a real post, that’ll come on Wednesday. I have some time off next week and over Thanksgiving, so I hope to make up for some lost time.  For those of you who have stuck around: thanks!  I hope not to disappoint.

As for that app?  Well, honestly, I can’t speak intelligently about as I am still chained to my Blackberry for a few more months.  Nobody makes apps for Blackberry’s and who can blame them?  But Mashable, CNET, USAToday, and others can all speak intelligently about it and seem to have nothing but good things to say.  As soon as we get Amy all set up on her new iPhone 5, I’ll put it on there.  We have a Snapfish account that goes back over a decade and this app will pull in that stuff in along with Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, and whatever else you got out there.

Also: it’s free!

I got to meet a few of the guys who poured themselves into Woven and if it is as good as they are, you’ll want to get a piece of it while the gettin’ is good.  It’s available for Windows phones, the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, NOOK Tablet, NOOK Color, Kindle Fire, and Android-powered phones, tablets, and cameras.  Users of those things will know where to go to get it.  My Blackberry and I, meanwhile, will just hang out here playing BrickBreaker.