As I might have mentioned before, whenever I feel like I am getting to the point where I am going to start writing on the regular basis, I always find some reason to stop again, or to at least put it off or avoid it. It's not that I don't enjoy writing, I actually love to write. That isn't to say that I am a phenomenal writer, or even that I am good, but I actually tend to like what I have written. The main reasons for me not writing in this blog as much as I would like to are as follows:
1. When I write, I don't tend to edit. Once I write something down, I don't go back and change it, except for grammar and punctuation when I catch it. So once I publish it, it will most likely be there forever.
2. I worry about how what I write will be perceived. Sometimes I write something, and I think to myself, am I over-sharing? Am I censoring myself too much? So when I write, sometimes issue no. 1 comes into play too much.
3. I want people to want to read what I am writing. I don't necessarily want to cater to any particular type of person, but I would be lying if I said that I publish this online purely for some therapeutic reason; I want people to want to read it. I do personally benefit from writing things down, but if it was purely for that reason I would just keep a handwritten journal, or a private electric journal. I write it online because I like the possibility of someone getting something from what I write, or being able to relate to a story or thought that I have shared. What's the point of being interconnected through the internet if we don't use it to actually connect to people? (And I don't mean for anonymous sex and used furniture.)
4. When I don't keep my blog up I feel guilty (like right now). I am not very good at keeping up with things over long periods of time (credit card payments, club memberships, anything that requires more than the attention span of a dodo bird), and although I was never baptized, I seem to have inherited my parents "Catholic guilt". Whenever I feel like I am letting someone down, be they real or hypothetical, I always feel bad, and tend to take it out emotionally on myself. So whenever I forget to write, or stop writing for a while, I invoke a strong sense of avoidance and denial to get over the bad feelings. So when I commit to writing in this thing, I need to try to stick with it, even if I mess up.
So, despite those 4 reasons, I am going to again try to commit to this blog, and allow it to be as flippy and flighty as I am. I know that this might be asking for trouble, but I am going to start with committing to writing something each day for the month of January in this blog. Whether it's a short blurb about, or a looooooong (possibly oversharing) entry, my plan is to write something every day this month. And yes, it is technically about 3AM on January 2nd, since it is still night I am counting this for the 1st.
So there you have it, the start to a short-term goal that I think that I can achieve. Let's see how it goes, huh?
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