Nobody could have predicted…
I don’t have enough time to post my travel log in ‘real time’ any more. By that, I mean posting each entry exactly 1 year ((= 365 days.)) after I first wrote it. I thought I was going to be able to handle it but I was wrong. And for that, I am sorry.
Digitising the one or two thousand words which I wrote every day during my trip ((The days so far have been sporadic, but that’s because it took a while to get up to speed with the writing when I was away. Things became more consistent quite quickly.)) is not the difficulty. I could keep up that pace with little effort. But, as Murray found out too, these things always take longer than you expect.
I’m not complaining – this is something I want to do, but I’m going to do it properly rather than quickly.
The thing is, I don’t just want to tell you the raw story. Some of it is unreadable and needs serious editing to turn it into prose, some of it I don’t feel comfortable sharing, and some of it is truly boring. If it’s going to be worth our time, it has to be edited. What’s more, every memory that I type up helps me to recall others that I want to include. I’m having a great time re-living it all, and I want to get as much interesting stuff on the record as I can. I don’t want to lose those memories forever.
The are photos too, don’t you forget. I took about 4,000 whilst I was away. Selecting the suitable ones and going through the process of uploading them and inserting them into the post is a mammoth task. Mammoths had huge coats and 4 legs; I’m just a measly human. It all takes time.
Take yesterday’s post. The raw text is about 1,500 words, but by the time I was finished with it – at least 4 or 5 hours later, seriously – it was closer to 3,500. I could easily have included another 10,000 words and many more than the 50 photos I did, if only I’d had the time ((Perhaps I will add to it some, but I felt happy publishing it as it was.)).
Unfortunately, I don’t have the time ((Actually, I do! It’s 19:15!)) to spend several hours of my productive time writing this travel log at the moment. I’m at university, it’s exam time, and I need good grades to continue the course that I’m currently on. That’s totally achievable, but maths is difficult, and to do my best I need to focus my energy on university work for the next couple of weeks ((My last exam is two weeks today.)).
The good news: I’m not giving up, and I’m probably not even stopping. I’m not going to be studying all of the time, and who knows, I might even choose to spend my free time relaxing in front of my keyboard, working on the next entry. What’s more, I’m having a relatively quiet summer this year, which means I’ll have plenty of time to spend on fanciful projects like this when I move home at the end of the month.
