We are now heading down the home stretch of Blaugust. There is about a week left in the whole event. If you’ve been diligent in trying to do that “post every day” thing that we still hand out an award for, you might be feeling the strain of having something worthwhile to say every single day in August.
Blaugust 2026
And there is your problem I would guess. You want to say something worthwhile, to impart meaning, to publish something that matters.
Matters to who?
I am here to suggest that if it matters to you then that is enough.
Also, it is staying motivated week for Blaugust, so this is me trying to be motivational or something.
Blaugust 2026 Schedule
I am unlikely to get you to want to write… you either feel that urge or you do not… but maybe I can help you with a roadblock or two that might be hindering you.
In addition to things that matter I will occasionally I will see someone suggest that they don’t want to repeat themselves or that somebody else wrote about a topic and now it doesn’t feel “fresh” or some such.
Look, after nearly 20 years at this there is rarely a topic I write about where I am not, in some way, repeating myself. And that is fine.
Have you ever read a book from somebody who is not, by profession, an author, who put together their thoughts or philosophy on a topic… this is a non-fiction thing… and then heard them speak or write later only to find them almost constantly repeating points made in their book?
I am going to use Guy Kawasaki as an example, and his book The Macintosh Way. I have a copy somewhere around here, signed by the author up at the ComputerWare store in Palo Alto back in the day.
It is a good book. A fun read, and not too long, with reflections on early Apple, the development of the Macintosh, and how to make great products.
I enjoyed it enough that I used to go out of my way to read anything about him in the press; guest columns he did, interviews, and whatever. And then I stopped.
I stopped because it became clear that he was most often dressing up what he wrote in The Macintosh Way in a variety of ways and sending it out into the world once more. The primary value after the first book, for me at least, was seeing the content of that applied in different situations.
Basically, he repeated himself. A lot.
But is that a bad thing? If an idea loses its value through repetition, that probably says more about the idea than anything. And there are always people who show up and are new to the idea, and the idea being presented as applicable in a different context. And sometimes you just change your mind about an idea, or find that there are new aspects to the whole thing.
So it goes. I too have repeated myself here on the blog. Quite often. Just around Blaugust, and mostly around motivation week, I have the following past posts:
- Aug 1, 2018 – It Is Blaugust and What Should I Even Write About?
- Aug 8, 2019 – Blaugust and What the Hell to Write About
- Aug 29, 2019 – Blaugust and Keeping the Words Flowing to the Site
- Apr 10, 2020 – Blapril and Figuring Out What to Write
- Aug 24, 2021 – On Blogging, Motivation, and Passion
- Aug 22, 2022 – Staying Motivated Going into Blaugust Week Four
- Aug 23, 2024 – Blaugust and Motivation – How The Sausage is Made at TAGN
- Aug 29, 2024 – Blaugust – Who Even Reads This Stuff?
- Aug 27, 2025 – Blaugust Motivation – Where Do All These Words Come From?
That is just Blaugust versions of this post. I have also brought this sort of thing up in annual review posts and in occasional reflections about blogging in general.
I’ll save you the bother of clicking on any of that, though I think there are a couple of choice ones on that list and sum up.
I adhere to the philosophy that it is better to have written and clicked publish than to have not written at all.
But I am also not a real writer. I do not practice it as a craft. I have not cleaved to the core tenet of the guild, which is that writing is re-writing. For this blog everything is effectively a first draft when I schedule a post to go out and I consider having high standards… or even somewhat modest standards, obviously enough if you’ve read much here… to be a mere obstruction, a vice to be avoided.
I write conversationally, the way I speak in real life, which should give you a sense of how annoying it is to be around me in person. I don’t tend to the correct alignment of my verbs and nouns very diligently. I will, if left unchecked, start every paragraph with a conjunction… often the same one. The one bit of self-editing I do tend towards is removing the leading word “and” from every paragraph when it gets out of hand. I also use too many pretentious words because my parents beat me with a thesaurus when I was a child.
Anyway, that is all I’ve got. But, as noted above, I’ve have variations on this post in the archives, in case repetition will help you in your need.
Meanwhile, here we are in that final week and the count of blogs signed up has hit 171. Here they are, listed out in alphabetical order:
- 20ilyApril
- 26g
- 392ms
- 82MHz
- A 3D Blog for a 3D World
- A parenthetical departure
- Academic Aesthetic
- Aeish World Neocities
- Agnes the Alien’s blog
- Alessandro Cuzzocrea
- Alex’s Review Corner
- An Archaeopteryx
- aneeshsathe.com
- annonimax
- Aster’s Asterisms
- Axxuy’s Internet Notebook
- Aywren’s Nook
- bavatuesdays
- bearblog
- Ben Ramsey
- Beyond Tannhauser Gate
- Beyond the Horizon
- Biggus Bloggus
- Blog – 鳥啼く頃に
- blog.x2600.cc
- BongoTwisty
- Brennan.day
- BurgeonLab
- Byte Vortex
- Casual Aggro
- Chasing Dings!
- ChristiRichards.com
- Christopherhimes.com
- clandestini
- coffee spills
- ComradeNerdy Blog
- Contains Moderate Peril
- Cubic Creativity
- Dave Henry Blog
- Dear Angel
- devz.cl
- diary.lollyrots.com
- Divergent Rays
- Dozenial Dragons
- Emma Juettner’s Blog
- Endgame Viable
- fluidline.neocities.org
- Fragmentary
- From the keyboard of Dr Jan
- fyr.io
- GamerLady P Blog
- Gamers Esoteric
- Games and Geekery
- Gaudete Theology
- Geek on a Harley
- gRegorLove.com
- Gridranger’s blog
- hamatti.org
- Heart Soul Machine
- I Can’t Think of a Name for this Website
- In An Age
- inanotherplace
- inconsistent.software
- Indiecator
- Inventory Full
- It’s Just This Little Chromium Switch Here
- JAG’s Workshop
- Jak2k’s Website
- Joelchrono’s Blog
- K-Squared Ramblings
- Kai Gulliksen
- Kay Talks Games
- Kayriene
- Kedara
- keeroks space
- Kevin Cunningham
- Knifesedge Blogs
- KVibber.com
- Lameazoid.com
- Lost Letters
- Lucky Instar
- Lyons in Beta
- lysurps
- Mailvaltar
- Many Welps
- Mar Qaroll’s The Marrowing!
- Matt’s Blog
- Medium
- Michael Harley
- michcia’s notes
- MMO Casual
- MMO One Night
- MogBlog
- msfjarvis.dev
- Musings Over Pints and Coffee
- muttthecowcat
- Nerd Girl Thoughts
- Nerdy Bookahs
- Newsonaut
- Noisy Deadlines
- NomadWarMachine
- nosrednayduj
- not all those who wander are lost
- note (large blog platform)
- Notes by JCProbably
- Nullish
- object dot computer
- Off the Top,
- OrbitalMartian
- owlblog
- Parallel Spirals
- Personal InfoCloud
- Pinkway
- Point, Click, Repeat
- Portrait of a….
- Pour The Coffee
- Pretend Typewriter
- prin.lu
- prry
- puxped’s station
- Quail Creations
- Quinn Daedal – Blog
- rachonaut
- re: nyman
- Riel’s Nest
- Rishi Dass
- ROSKA’S REVERIE
- Rukinations
- Ryan Patrick Randall
- Sal’s
- Select * From Life
- Shadowz Abstract Gaming Blog
- Sheri42.net
- Small Good Things
- Srijan’s Home
- SweaterPockets
- Syl’s Blog
- Sylvia’s Studio
- Tabitha
- TAGN
- Tantek Çelik
- Taxodium
- Taylor film crit
- The Friendly Necromancer
- The Ghastly Mirror
- The Maker Dad
- theTangentSpace
- thethinkingboard
- ThinkRoot
- thiskurt’s blog
- Through Wolfy’s Eyes
- tommyeveryday
- Troy Press
- Ubergeek Kelly’s World
- Varun Barad
- WCRobinson
- What the Fran
- Why I Game
- with words, wonder
- Words of the AgingGamer
- Words Under My Name
- words, essays, and more
- Wry Writer
- Zelibeli
- コーポ雪原
- スナックエルベ
- もうすぐ33歳
- わくパンの思考のかけら
- 世界のねじを巻くブログ
- 伏枥之间
- 素生
Few things motivate a writer so much as being read, so perhaps you could take a minute or three and visit some of the sites on the list.