Holiday Hiatus - A Short One

I haven't run away... I've been busy enjoying the holidays with family and friends and hope you all are too! I will resume the regularly scheduled insanity soon!

Happy holidays!

I Might be Blogging all Wrong... Kind of Part 2

Recently I have been finding myself reading lots of other blogs and comparing myself to them. It was in this comparison I realized that the possibility exists that I might be a shitty blogger. My top three reasons were that my blog posts were often very long, that I did not post on a regular basis and that I wasn’t very up on current events. I’m sure there were other reasons but those were the three I chose to focus on for the time being.  But what made me think of this, you might ask? Good question I reply:

I love to read, I constantly have my nose in a book, or a magazine, and as I have mentioned before,  I have recently been looking up blogs. I loved going through the variety of blogs out there. I have read blogs on fashion (I love vintage styles), blogs on pets (cute dog and cat stories and pictures get me every time) and blogs on cooking (I have to learn somewhere). I have also read a lot of religious blogs. I have read blogs by Atheists, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Progressive Christians and, naturally, Pagans. Some of these blogs were great, others not as great but still informative.

In reading all of these blogs I couldn’t help but compare my little blog to those written by others. Some of these writers were amateurs who only wrote on their own blogs, others are pro’s who are published on big websites or even have written books. And you know what; they are all really good at it… I mean really good at it. I have been enthralled with many of them to the point where I stay up late and read until my eyes burn and I can no longer see straight (the Just One More Post Threshold). Some made me laugh, others made me cry and they all made me think. Because I admired them I strove to emulate them.

And I hit a friggen brick wall. I had lots of ideas scrawled away in various notebooks scattered across my house and my office; lots of half started ideas, unfinished thoughts meandering their way across the pages. And yet, no blog posts. It's not that I forgot about writing, I just couldn't seem to get it going. I spent a long time wondering what the hell was wrong with me, hunting down ways to improve, ways to get motivated. I have always had a busy schedule with lots of conflicting demands on me yet have never had such a hard time writing.

I can remember vividly sitting in the corner of the dishroom at my old job, in between running the dishes through the dishwasher and scrapping trays jotting down snatches of ideas, pulling them from my dense little skull and slipping them onto the page. All the while desperately avoiding the prying eyes of my nosy coworkers and overbearing boss. I would rush home and sit in my bedroom and furiously transfer them either into a cleaner notebook  or onto my laptop. Even today I can find these scraps of thoughts and stories in my old notebooks, random sheets of paper shoved into a dresser drawer and in files scattered across my laptop.

I have never found writing so hard before... no wait, that's not true... I have had this kind of trouble before. When writing for school or for work. Whenever I had to write a specific way (such as a paper for a class I hated or a short story for English classes or a major report for my boss due the next day) my ability to write seemed to dry right up. I could usually force something passable out of me (thank Gods for deadlines, nothing like the panic a looming deadline creates to force creativity) but it wasn't anything I enjoyed. And now that I think about this I found out that I was blogging all wrong.

In attempting to emulate those I admired I had lost a vital part of my own creativity. I was forcing who and what I am (which expresses itself the most in how I write) into a mold that I was never meant to fill. So today I say goodby to this type of attempted writing. I admire those who write the way they do, they do it a hell of a lot better than I could. Part of me wishes I could write as they do, but that's just not me... and that's ok.

I started this blog with no real clear idea of what I wanted to do with it or where I wanted it to go. I still don't know what I want to do with it or where the hell I want it to go. The only thing I can say is that I'm going to keep doing it, if only for my own amusement, and let it grow into a reflection of myself.

I Might be a Shitty Blogger... Kind of Part 1

As the title above stats I am really beginning to think that I might just possibly suck at this blogging thing. I threw my hat into the blogging arena about two… or was it three years ago! I was very excited about this new thing I had heard about (which tells you how far behind the times I am). Finally there was a vehicle for my witty repertoire and my brilliant ideas... ok maybe not so much. But after a few years I think I might be a shitty blogger.

My first evidence of this fact is that I haven’t posted in almost two months… I gather that most good bloggers tend to post at least two or three times a week! Hahahahahah! Two to three times a week... are you kidding me?!? I have a hard time remembering to clean out the cat box every other day! I'm exceptionally thankful that I am able to remember to pay my bills on time! I had to actually reset my password for the blog to be able to get in and post this Ok so let’s go with a fail on that one…

Second piece of evidence is that in looking at the blogs I enjoy reading they are all much shorter than my average post… apparently my brain is somewhat stuck in college as my posts tend to really follow a nice essay format (be thankful I no longer write 20 page papers… actually I’m glad about that too!) I always seem to have a lot of words, a lot to cover. I pity my friends who have to listen to me tell stories, I take forever! I also find that sometimes I take forever to get to the point or to illustrate an example. You see I just tend to ramble on and on and on… and the points I make I think are valid but sometimes I could probably say the same thing with less words… so that one is a fail…

Third piece of evidence is that blogs are supposed to be relevant. Every good blog that I read has an author that is well informed on current events. They know about politics, environmentalism, media figures. I’m not going to lie, I suck at this one. I am very informed about what is going on with my friends, my family and my local community… beyond that things get really hazy really fast.  Some guy named Obama is the president again, ok cool. Olympics are in Sochi… wait there was Olympics this year?!?! Yep add another fail to the list…

I’m sure there are more we could add to the list; this is just the first three that popped into my little skull. To be honest when I started blogging I had no idea what a blog really was. I just saw a chance to make a fool of myself online and jumped at the opportunity. Now that I am what… two years into it I’m beginning to think I’m not very good at it.. Kinda sucks, and it kinda doesn’t!