Is it possible to do a thing forever
And learn nothing? And get no better?
For anyone still following this blog, you might’ve noticed that the frequency of posts had decreased to about once a month, and then to nothing at all for the last few months. As the year draws to a close, now seems as good a time as any to draw a line under this project, and indulge in a little reflection on the past twelve years or so.
Keeping an obscure anarchist wordpress blog alive for a little over a decade means it’s lasted through some pretty major shifts in how people use the internet for organising. When I started out, Indymedia was probably past its peak but still a viable resource that people used, and it then gave way to a period when anyone organising an event would be promoting it on Facebook, which feels not much less ancient now. And now there’s the great Twitter exodus, bringing another online era to a close, and reinforcing once again that everything on the internet is both incredibly permanent and incredibly ephemeral – people may have access to an archive of every embarrassing comment you made five or ten years ago, but then again years of your posts can just get deleted in a second if a tech billionaire takes a dislike to you. As we move on to whatever comes next, it would be nice if people could shift back to less corporate, more DIY approaches again.
On reaching my ten-year anniversary in 2020, I have been tempted to retire this blog then, on the grounds that a decade is long enough to be doing anything, and then go off and do something else, but it seemed like a bit of a pointless and arbitrary gesture. Now that I am actually abandoning this thing, I feel I should give a bit of an explanation, although there’s not really much of a story there.
I suppose one paradox or challenge that faces everyone who wants to both do stuff and reflect on it is that, the more time you spend doing things, the less time and energy you have to write about them, and this year feels like one that’s been particularly busy in terms of actually organising for me. I continue to write stuff in various places under different names, and it seems like, at least for the past six months or so, I haven’t had the time and energy to both write other stuff elsewhere and to keep this updated. Perhaps I’ll revive it at some point, if I want to write something that feels like it’d fit better here than anywhere else, but perhaps I won’t.
Among others, shoutouts are due to Wessex Solidarity, a similar blog that seems to still be going, and to Strike Map, who are doing a very good job of circulating information about strikes and solidarity from a non-party political, non-corporate perspective. Between them, I think those two probably do a good job of filling any hole left by the end of this blog. The updated Bristol ABC site is also well worth checking out for prisoner solidarity and repression news.
And as one final events listing, readers in Newcastle should check out the Crimethinc event at the Star and Shadow on January the 3rd, and for anyone in Bristol, the local Angry Workers are holding a film screening and discussion about the Yellow Vest movement on the 13th.
See you in the streets.
Cautiously pessimistic 
