On the Apparent Inverse Relationship Between Writing Productivity and Blogging

So I'm looking at my blog history on this website, and it tells me that almost two months have passed since my last entry. In the same period, I have formatted and copy-edited a book (including the five tedious hours of double-checking references), began a new research project with students, written a keynote speech on being a researcher (called "On Being a Researcher"), and written about 30,000 words of a new book on Heidegger and developmental psychology (called... can you guess?).

I have concluded that there is apparently an inverse relationship between scholarly productivity and blogging productivity: as scholarly productivity increases, the number and frequency of blog posts seems to go down. I tried to draw this relationship, and doing so realized something else. Here is what I drew:

The Apparent Relationship Between SP and BP

Analysis

My fingers wouldn't allow me to draw a straight "negative correlation" line that started high on the y-axis and ended high on the x axis. I became briefly paralyzed while, in my head, I tried to account for those periods during which I am capable of nothing more than playing video games. Yes, during those completely barren days and weeks I produce nothing creative at all. It is only once I rediscover the process of creation--writing articles, reading anything, and planning books--that I experience an increase in scholarship and blogging productivity. That is what I experienced over the summer, and hence I maintained once- and twice-weekly blog posts.

Following the regression line along the x-axis from left to right, this newfound creativity first manifested as regular blog posts. Each post represents a passing thought or intuition, crafted over the span of thirty minutes or so. Blog posts require a minimal investment of time and commitment. But as my courage to create grows, I spend more time writing articles and book chapters--that is, my enduring scholarship, which incidentally requires a bit more courage and a lot more time--and less time on blog posts.

Confounding Variables

Oops. I've just discovered a confounding variable that throws my whole relationship-between-WP-and-BP regression equation into a muddle. The confounding variable is the topic on which I'm writing my more serious scholarship. The book I'm working on (the one about Heidegger) currently doesn't really overlap with higher education. Therefore I don't have daily or weekly rough drafts to share on here. I'm sure that if my next book was on mentoring undergraduate researchers, then I would have had a pile of blog posts lined up.