I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about what, or who, I’m writing for here on m’blog, which sometimes feels like a bit of a Mary Celeste from an earlier blogging sea in comparison to my newsletter over on Substack.

In my head the newsletter is the more “professional” presence, with lots of links to the various artistic endeavours I’d like people to look at, or turn up to, or listen to in, along with a rambling “essay of the week” on whatever comes into my head.

There are book and comedy reviews, and there are gentle suggestion that maybe you should book tickets to my shows and gigs.

The blog, I think of more as a diary, in that I often forget that anyone reads it at all. [1]

In reality, this is a fairly nebulous division. Both presences have a similar readership, and I’m not very professional anywhere.

I’m curious to see how it’ll develop, and I am trying to write here more regularly when I have time.

As well as writing for myself, offline, to be seen by nobody, it’s still useful to be dimly aware of the concept of “the reader”, to stop me from writing any old shit.

And it’s helpful that this reader, in my mind’s eye, is an amorphous blob, and not, say, my friend Lindsay. [2]

[1] Until someone posts a comment about cricket, or Wimpy, or I hang out with a friend in real life and they already know what I’ve been up to or what I think about things.

Which feels a bit like they’ve snuck into my bedroom and read my journal, rather than the things I willingly stick up on a public website.

[2] Two things that are impossible to confuse.