Summer blogging had me a blast

Well, I'm back to work proper tomorrow after a fairly long summer of staying in bed till 3p.m., some fairly easy-going TEFL work, a lot of TV football, some sunburn and some soddenness, and a rekindling of my love of the Irish Sea (including a dip yesterday morning with other lunatics).

And it's occurred to me that, having started blogging in mid-May as the school year was winding down, that pretty much all of my blogging has been done in summer months. I'll be going back to college this year to learn how to be a proper teacher and it's dawning on me that I really won't have as much time as I'd like to devote to the blog. Or, at least, I shouldn't have as much time to devote to the blog. I hope I'm able to keep it going in some respectable way but there is a fair chance it'll be a bit more sporadic in nature from henceforth. Of course, there's every chance I'll be logging on every day to let off steam. I ask your forgiveness in advance if this becomes a bit whiney occasionally.

I started this blog simply because I realised I was spending lots of time on other blogs and commenting all over the place. occasionally my comments went off on a bit of a tangent and I was basically just using them as a mini-post, a stolen forum for my own views. Blogging looked easy and it turned out to be even easier so I now put my stronger views in their rightful place: here. In the last few days I entirely unwittingly began a debate as to the importance of blog-rolls. Rosie took it and ran with it and I've been very interested to see what other people have thought. But to her more militant defenders (and she does have a few) I must stress again that I was not criticising her or Darragh's lack of a blog-roll, I was simply curious as to why they don't have/like them. Having a go at someone for the things they choose to include or omit from their sidebar would be absolutely crass. And then some.

I choose to have a blog-roll because I don't use Google reader or anything like that so it simply provides a handy link-list for me to check up on. I'll be honest and admit that I don't read them all every day but I do check them all pretty regularly. There's nothing on there that I don't like, though I naturally like some more than others. Several of them are my friends but if I thought they were shite then I'd take them off. You have been warned. And I'd like to think they'd take me off theirs if my already patchy quality deteriorated much further. Some haven't reciprocated and it doesn't bother me in the least. That would be petty. I'll persevere with mine in the hope that passers-by will occasionally click on something and discover someone well-worth reading.

The nicest and most unexpected side-effect of blogging has been meeting new people. They've all been lovely. I won't name names or link to them now because you all know damn well who you are. And I'm better off for having met you all. So, if the Irish blogosphere is a bit like social-networking at times (and I think it is), it's definitely a higher form of social-networking than anything else I've come across before.