In the rush of adjusting to my summer schedule—where I have about 10 times more free time than I do during the academic year—I’ve pretty much forgotten about my blog.
To my astonishment, I had received comments in my absence. I knew they couldn’t be from my mother, who doesn’t have time for blogs (though she’ll read anything I send her) or my brother who thinks blogs are outdated and slow-paced.
One of these commenters (thanks!) hits the nail on the head…
“Blogging's pretty hard to start out unless you're doing something interesting.”
I’ll admit it: I am not doing anything interesting. There aren’t many thrills and the drama is, I was going to say non-existent, but I think petty is more accurate.
So that leaves me with pretty much nothing to say, right? Not quite…I journal, I write "creative non-fiction" (I'm hesitant to call them essays these days). In short, I ramble. I really don’t write up-to-the-minute stuff. Complain about the Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain? By the time I do enough research to feel ready to say anything, the furor is over. I thought I could escape this feeling of responsibility on a blog, but why bother? Spouting off seems pointless when so many more knowledgeable people are ahead of me. Tons of other bloggers are keeping an eye on this stuff and are doing well enough on their own.
I could try blogging about my personal life, because no one else knows enough to do that better than I, but it’s not my style.
Basically, I guess I’m not a true blogger. But I seem to write regardless of whether I expect to have an audience. So I might as well post it…That way, I at least have a feeling of completion and an illusion of audience.
The previous post, then is the re-working of one of my first posts. The original post was an off-the-cuff response, and I ended up working on it as an “essay.” I’m really not interested in subjecting myself to the frustration of attempting to publish. I’m not interested in working on this piece, either, though, so I need to do something with it to prevent the endless editing to which I have an unfortunate tendency. Enough said.