There’s a widely-accepted wisdom in this age of social media, that to build an audience of any kind you have to be consistent.

One comic strip every morning, re-treading the footsteps of newspaper syndication. A polished sketch each day, sacrificed upon the altar of the Algorithm to grease the wheels of virality. Videos, articles, recipes, a steady churn of SEO-friendly content to be sure your audience always has something new to experience. To make them want for more is sin, to make them wait is heresy.

And sure, that’s one approach: to be an awe-inspiring fountain of creativity, to pour yourself out upon the world and hope that your aquifer truly runs as deep as you believe. But it’s not always sustainable when set against real-life challenges and stresses, when the creative drive runs dry, when that break-neck pace breaks you.

And then all you’re left with is an unmoored feeling of guilt.

You see it in apologetic “I know I haven’t posted in a while, but…” social media posts all the time, as if taking a break from the churn requires penitence. And while I empathise with the emotional cocktail behind those posts, the one thing your audience wants to see less than no content is a self-effacing apology for not keeping up with a self-imposed treadmill.

“Ah, but Rob,” you say, “isn’t this you taking the scenic route to talking about your own guilt for only updating this site a couple of times this year? Seems like a somewhat-hypocritical rhetorical device to me.”

And I’d chuckle and say “Except I’m not apologising. I’m saying maybe there’s nothing to be guilty about.”

I’ve talked before about the challenges of curating content, of ensuring the signal rises above the noise, but often the challenge is - having found your audience - managing an excess of signal. There is so much to read, so many games to play and art to see, and very few folks have time to visit their favourite hundred websites each morning in case there’s something new to see. So how do you keep your audience informed when you do have something to share with them?

For many years prior to social media, and still today, one of the best answers is RSS. Get your audience to subscribe to the RSS feed for your site, and it doesn’t matter how often or infrequently you update, they’ll be informed when you have something new to share.

I’m a big advocate for hosting your creativity on your own site, and RSS is one of those key pathways to keep your audience in the loop without feeling beholden to algorithmic regularity or burnout-inducing schedules.

But crucially, visitors to your site have to know about your RSS feeds. This site is created with Hugo - which has RSS functionality built in - and I’ve had RSS pages available since launch, but aside from the occasional blogpost link, I never got round to making it clear what pages had RSS feeds.

That’s now fixed, and you should find the orange RSS logo at the top-right of each page with a feed.

So what have I been up to in 2025, you rhetorically ask?

• My first professional-rate short fiction was published at FactorFour magazine: These Hearts, Who Once Held Up the Sky

• I’ve been busy working away at wrapping up my Elden Ring photography project, from Caelid through to the opening act of the DLC: Elden Ring Photography Tour

• After thirty-plus years believing that I couldn’t draw, I decided to take up painting, with a focus on studies of birds and my own Outer Wilds photography: Art Studies

• Taking photos of small things has been a big focus of the summer so far, and I spent most of June crouched in a clover patch taking photos of bees: A Bee-stiary

• I’m also working up to posting more of my music here; I’ve experimented with it in the past, but I’m currently planning to record some of my piano improvisation for a new Music section. This isn’t quite ready yet, but I’ve condensed the navigation bar to leave room for this new section, so with a following wind it won’t take long!

Maybe I’ll be posting more in the next six months.

Maybe I’ll wrap up some of the essays sitting in my “just one more editing pass” folder, and feel that sense of relief that they’re no longer running round inside my head.

Maybe I’ll post some music, or more artwork.

And maybe not, if work and the world keep me on my toes and the months slip away. I’ll still be making things; sometimes they’re just not quite ready to share.

I’m not going to feel guilt for taking the scenic route through my creative life, and neither should you.