Thoughts On People and Blogs

As I mentioned to the supporters on Ko-fi a week ago, I am currently considering the possibility of pausing the series at the end of this third year, with the last interview going live on August 28th. There are a few reasons for this.

The first reason is that running the series is starting to become more annoying and time-consuming over time. I tried to simplify my life as much as possible, recoded part of my site to make it easier to manage and publish the series, but at the end of the day, it’s a project that relies on other people to exist. And that can be a problem in the long run. The number of emails I need to send out, and the number of times I either get completely ignored or ghosted is trending upwards. I’m at the point where I can send out invitations to 10+ people, and I’m not confident that at least 1 of them will result in an actual interview being published. And that sucks.

It sucks because, since day one, I tried to find a good balance between keeping the series running smoothly and not letting guests wait for months and months to get their interview published. But I’m at the point where I can no longer do that. More than a few times, I found myself with the queue completely empty while waiting for dozens of people to get back to me. Every time someone came through in the end, and the series kept marching on week after week, but let me tell you: it’s not fun.

Also not fun is having to chase people. This series is obviously not important in the grand scheme of things, so it’s totally understandable if people forget to reply or can’t find the time to do it. But you’d be surprised by the number of people who, multiple times in a row, emailed me to tell me they were going to end me the answers “next week” only to then disappear into thin air. And I get it, I don’t have hard feelings towards all these people. Shit happens, and we all have busy lives. But it gets tiring after a while.

The other reason is a lack of momentum. If you have worked on any type of side project, you know how things go: you are full of motivation at first, and you can’t wait to get started, and then you slowly lose momentum. And I’m definitely running out of momentum. The main reason for this is that the past few months have been particularly tiring for a multitude of factors, and support for the series isn’t exactly stellar. You’d be surprised by how few people have emailed over the years to either suggest a guest or simply say something nice about it. And if you’re tempted to email me now, after having read this, please don’t.

This brings me to the final reason why I’m tempted to pause the series. I know there are lots of people out there who enjoy it and would love to see it continue. But the reality of the vast majority of projects on the web is that they’re usually either solo projects or they’re run by very small teams that more often than not end up losing momentum and shutting everything down because of a lack of support.

And nothing makes me angrier than seeing people popping up from nowhere to express their sadness when a project gets shut down. Because where the fuck were these people when the creators of these projects needed some help to keep the momentum going? And I’m talking about something as simple as sending a message to them to let them know you appreciate what they do. Sometimes that’s more than enough. And yet even that is so rare these days. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, because it does, but it’s rare.

And so part of me thinks I should stop the series simply because it’s important to remind people that good things can only exist if we all collectively make them happen.

That’s the mental state I’m in right now. Again, if you feel compelled to email me now, I say redirect those good intentions somewhere else and go email someone who works on something else you enjoy and let them know you appreciate what they do.

What’s next for P&B then? For now, the series will continue as usual. There are 6 interviews ready to go at the moment, 12 people have expressed interest in participating, and I have emailed 10 more. I did consider the possibility of making it an every-other-week series rather than weekly, in order to make it less annoying to run. We’ll see what happens. Plenty of time to still think about all this.