Blaugust2026

3 minute read
A slightly crumpled envelope on a bed, with a open suitcase in the lower left corner of the screen and a hotel bedside table on the right.

Ask anyone who’s seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: the film’s most vivid image is a crumpled envelope lying on a bed in the Bates Motel.

This envelope, of course, bulges with $40,000 in cash that Marion Crane has stolen from her job in Phoenix. True to Hitchcock’s visionary genius, the film provides multiple shots of Marion looking over at the envelope. Janet Leigh’s eyes convey a jumble of desire, regret, resignation, and resolve. Will she keep the cash and take it to her lover? Or will she return it, and her own guilty person, to Phoenix?

If you’re familiar with Psycho or Hitchcock in general, there’s a good chance that you’ve already seen through my ruse. The envelope is in fact not the image most people will remember, nor will most remember those elements of Psycho’s story.

However, that stolen cash certainly is, for my money, the paradigmatic example of what Hitchcock called a MacGuffin: an element important to the story and characters, but ultimately unimportant to the viewers. The MacGuffin provides a compelling and convenient on-ramp to caring about the story and characters.

To put it differently: I’m going to be participating in Blaugust this year!

Blaugust2026

Much like AcWriMo, Blaugust is an event where people challenge themselves to write throughout the month. I’ve read and appreciated entries from other people’s Blaugust participation before, without ever feeling called to do so myself. But when Juha-Matti Santala’s On blogging, Blaugust and challenging yourself showed up in my RSS reader a few days ago, I instinctively felt I should give it a go.

I’m in the midst of reading for my Ph.D. qualifying exams and could absolutely benefit from a structure that helps me move from scribbling marginalia to writing thoughts developed beyond the length of a social media post.

So that’s my motivation for Blaugust participation this year: it’s a convenient MacGuffin that should help me commit both to more regular writing and sharing of my thoughts in progress.

Based on some of the drafts or working notes percolating in my other digital files, likely coming attractions include:

  • an overview of my Ph.D. project
  • enthusiastic posts about things I’ve been listening to, reading, or watching lately
  • accessibility
  • open educational resources
  • pedagogy
  • zines
  • my zine about accessibility & pedagogy
  • an example of something I’ve recently automated without using any generative “AI” platforms
  • reflections on how I encountered “open educational resources” before the term “OER” existed
  • write-ups of how I use tools like Obsidian or Pandoc

First, Know Thyself

The canonical, classic challenge of Blaugust is to publish 31 things during the 31-day-long month of August.

This challenge is ambitious.

I’m more in need of something akin to Brandon Walsh’s Couch to Paragraph Writing Program—a scaffolding to help me make writing and sharing my thoughts a more routine occurrence. I also know that I have high expectations and a tendency to nope out early if I feel like I’m not producing something I’m comfortable putting out into the world, so I plan to set my own expectations drastically low.

If I post 5 things during August 2026 (the organizers’ own “Bronze Award” level), I’m going to consider it a success. (Yes, I initially started to type “a modest success” and had to catch myself.)

I’ll almost certainly spread these posts across both my more “professional” category of posts (that’s my Semi-schematic Newsletter) and my regular blog posts. I might also end up tinkering a bit throughout the month with how my site’s categories and RSS feeds handle posts… but if you’re subscribed to the all-inclusive main feed, I don’t anticipate that you’ll miss anything.

Extending an Invitation

Have you been meaning to start a blog, newsletter, or some other way of sharing your thoughts? Do you have a website gathering dust, must like mine has been the last few months?

You’re clearly welcome to sign up for Blaugust 2026 as well!

If you’ve been toying with the idea but don’t have a site of your own, here’s a few free platforms that I’d consider using if I didn’t already have this site:

  • Knowledge Commons, which offers free WordPress-based sites, among other fantastic services
  • Bear, a lightweight blog platform
  • Leaflet, a blog platform that uses the the same social ecosystem as Bluesky
  • Neocities, a
  • Al-folio, a GitHub Pages theme. This is by far the most technically-inclined of these suggestions, but if you’ve already been interested in blogging with Jekyll or GitHub Pages, it seems like one of the best-maintained options at the moment, particular for anyone interested in a combination portfolio / CV / resume and blog site.

Here’s to all of us having a good August, whether we’re writing, reading, or otherwise just being together in the world.

Kudos

Did you enjoy this? Let me know:

Perhaps even leave a comment below?

Cite this post:

Randall, Ryan P. “Blaugust2026”. Published July 27, 2026. https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/blaugust2026. Accessed on .

You may also enjoy