Looking back at some of my old ideas

Over a year ago, when I was in the middle of some writer's block, I decided to write up a list of blogpost ideas so I could get some creativity back. It didn't really work, since I forgot about the list soon after, and later that year, I basically abandoned the blog for two months. But I've since remembered the list, so let's go through it and see how it fared.

I started writing the list on the 26th January, and my last revision to the list was on the 7th April. For context, that timespan included twenty-three posts, and I ticked off about nine of them in that time. Those included the posts on Leeds, making aspirin, and the five Claphams. One notable caveat to these is that I had actually been planning to blog about a few of them for a while before, so including them was almost cheating. The post ideas I'm really interested in are the absolutely random ones I've never come close to considering since. Here are a few of those, and no, you're never getting a post on them:

• Airports - best and worst
• I've been to loads of airports all my life, I'm sure this could be a fun writing experience. Let's be honest, though - the destinations are far cooler than the airports. A post on airports would likely turn into me ranting about how pathetic and hostile they are, which I kinda hinted at when I blogged about Gatwick for the lols. But yes, Changi Airport in Singapore is by far the coolest.
• Three digit phone numbers and why they exist
• This was actually something that was on my mind for a bit. This is the kind of post I'd have written back in the earlier days of the blog, when I was willing to write hundreds of words on a pretty niche concept that most people don't care for. The idea here was to be like "what are some weird phone numbers, btw do you know about the speaking clock", and, perhaps rightfully, I realised that was dead in the water. My writer's block did you guys a favour.
• Dentists
• For some reason, I thought this could be a post? I'm not even sure what I was going to write about - all the times I've been to the dentist? Whatever.
• The art of stopping
• This was a post where the title came first, and everything else was supposed to follow. It was going to be inspired by this phrase my physics teacher used to say: "We don't stop". He's an absolute legend, without him I would have failed my physics A Level. 
• I reached a compromise where I turned the post into something I published on -b, which is my now abandoned second blog. The post was basically me telling myself I needed to not let myself be bogged down by any embarrassing memories or regrets I once had, which I guess is a cool message, but which also wastes the potential that post could have had. If I knew what to write, it could have been an AO2a classic in my opinion. 
• What makes a song post-punk/do genres make any sense?
• I think the reason I had this idea was because I was slowly becoming disillusioned with every music site classifying artists under increasingly niche micro-genres. I used post-punk as an example because I wrote about it loads in the earlier days of this blog, in fact I sometimes still do. I also don't think this post would have been worth writing in the end, purely because it would have also turned into a meaningless rant.
• The first southern outpost on the Tube
• The answer is Kew Gardens and Richmond, which opened in 1878. I've since blogged about Kew Gardens, as in the actual gardens, and I'll get to Richmond at some point. So I'll have blogged about them, but without any transport framing.

The funniest thing about all these ideas is they're not all that. They're really just the result of what happens when you force yourself to be creative, instead of actually being creative. I've already mentioned countless times that I'm generally a spontaneous person - I often don't plan ahead, sometimes I'll change my mind on where I want to go in the moment. Of course loads of ideas I wrote down sixteen months ago didn't go anywhere, because I wasn't interested in writing about them - I was interested in thinking I'd like to. For some of these ideas, my first feeling was to cringe at them, which might be harsh, but I also think it's deserved.

For better or worse, the posts I write tend to be things I actually want to publish. Sure, there'll be the odd post I regret immediately, and some of my old posts haven't aged well. But the vast majority of them have been interesting, and I still enjoy reading them today. That's probably the best outcome possible. 

This happens to be my 400th post, by the way...hard to believe I've had 399 ideas better than these few!