Gear and pinion

I'm fighting an uphill battle here. Trying to keep a blog alive, in gear and meaningful, goes against all odds. I'm sure (not going to bother to actually find out) there are millions of blogs starting daily. After all, who doesn't think has an interesting story to tell? I'm sure only a tiny amount of them survive the first 2 months. And of those, an even tinyer quantity make it through the first year of existence. Very few of any kind will continue with a daily cadence beyond the first 2 or 3 weeks. You know, commitment, interesting stuff to share, time are all difficult things to secure daily. I'm one that worries about stupid stuff, and starting a blog and not keeping it afloat feels wrong, shallow, whimsical. Very very similar to my relationship with Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. They don't click into place with me. I feel attracted to that communication stream, to the instant reward of likes and putting out there stuff that probably shouldn't be there in the first place, by reaching lots of people across geographies instantaneously, but I never got that inner peace with its purpose in my life. In a sense, I feel like just unplugging it all, but then I feel I might benefit from having those electronic ties established, but I feel inconveniently at odds with the best usage of it all. Grrr. Having a blog has the clear advantage that you have a more wholesome control over the content. You choose when, how, how long, independently of what other people tweets or FB posts. However, it has a bigger toll in the way of your own exigence as a blogger on the content and the overall depth you want to put to it, since here it's all about developing an idea in a few paragraphs. Of course, the target might or might not be better defined and it's entirely possible that you write for yourself but somehow this feels more personal and less show-off. It's Sunday morning on a Barcelona weekend. Haven't really prepared for the weekend and as a result it's going nowhere. Total waste of a weekend. Shame on me! I'm thinking going for a hike/walk to the Llobregat wetlands to see what's up there with the birds and see the planes landing at BCN airport. Should be pretty busy today with the MWC starting tomorrow. For the record, there's a Subway strike planned for tomorrow and Wednesday. Well done, boys and girls! For those of you that aren't familiar with today's Barcelona social scene, and in my humble opinion, there's an excess of complaining going on in here. Granted, harsh times are upon us, but I can't see how complaining about public health, which is one of the best and cheapest of all of Western Europe, is going to get us anywhere. Lots of complaints about tourism killing the neighbourhoods and all of that, but the target of the complaint is not clear to me. Some of them want to stop the cruise-ship tourism and turn it into a kind of high-brow cultural tourism. Yeah, sure... We're so full of ourselves that consider we can advise how visitors must spend their time. We blame this tourism for the poverty and inequalities going on in the city but challenge the actual source of the income, rather than the poor way the money is distributed. We can't seem to find the balance between the two. When the current Mayor's team got in office, they announced they were reconsidering the MWC and the conventional tourism/hotels licenses to ensure BCN was going to turn into a socially fairer city. All the economic powerhouses freaked out and within days she was curbing her stance. Previous incumbents were top-heavy (ie, free traffic to expansion of the income sources, read the Port attraction to cruise liners, more hotel licenses, look to the other side when the illegal tourism apartment rentals mushroomed, etc) but not very engaged in making the inequality rate lower... These rich-poor easy discourses are all the rage nowadays and probably the root of the conflict that will impact quite visibly tomorrow's MWC mobility, in the world's spotlight. Pragmatism and calm aren't virtues related to us fiery Mediterraneans.