Enough to Make Big Daddy Shiver
Over the past week I've started two posts and abandoned them both. I've also been excruciatingly bored this week- both at work and at home, so it's not like I have been too busy to sit down and write. I just haven't felt like it. Like I haven't "felt like" drawing, painting, or doing anything even remotely artistically productive over the past 2 or 3 months. Thinking, oh great, another thing that I have become totally uninterested in to add to my list of recent steps in my downward spiral.
But today after waking up from a long, deeply satisfying nap on the floor in front of the air conditioner, I realized in real language why I have been offish to my blog. Earlier this week r started a blog, after several weeks of urging him to do so. I must not have thought he would actually do it, because even though I rationally know that it's a good way for him to expand what he's doing and thinking, I was secretly disappointed. No, I was jealous. This was MY idea first. It also dawned on me that he might be actually reading my postings more often as he is in the neighborhood making his own. So now what am I supposed to do? Expound on my inane dissatisfaction with life privately - on pen and paper? What I decided today was, no. I will not force myself to keep a journal is some cramped gridded notebook just to save myself the humiliation of facing up to what I have actually written. I have never kept up this long with a real journal anyways, so I think the fact that I am still here is telling of my exhibitionist tendencies. While I might recoil at having people recognize who is actual writing this, I secretly crave it. (Well, not so secretly anymore)
The other thing I realized this week was that in starting this blog I have joined the millions of people who write about nothing in the hopes that someone out there will read it. Apparently, I am not alone in my attention seeking. This realization also contributed to my freezing up on the writing front. In my boredom, I have spent (correction, wasted) huge amounts of time paging through other people's blogs in hopes of reading something even remotely interesting. Having failed at finding anything other than self absorbed rantings, it dawned on me that I was one of them. That I have contributed nothing truly original or noteworthy to warrant a repeat visit by any unassuming reader. So why bother generating more junk? This leads nicely to another conclusion reached this week: that the best thing for me to do at this moment in my life is to continue not caring about anything. I will continue to not care about my future, my job, the disarray of our apartment and my utter lack of ambition, for as long as I see fit. With this strategy in place, there is no room to care about whether what I post is relevant, interesting or novel. After all, I should be so lucky to have a reader at all, even if they leave rolling their eyes at the mendacity of it all.
But today after waking up from a long, deeply satisfying nap on the floor in front of the air conditioner, I realized in real language why I have been offish to my blog. Earlier this week r started a blog, after several weeks of urging him to do so. I must not have thought he would actually do it, because even though I rationally know that it's a good way for him to expand what he's doing and thinking, I was secretly disappointed. No, I was jealous. This was MY idea first. It also dawned on me that he might be actually reading my postings more often as he is in the neighborhood making his own. So now what am I supposed to do? Expound on my inane dissatisfaction with life privately - on pen and paper? What I decided today was, no. I will not force myself to keep a journal is some cramped gridded notebook just to save myself the humiliation of facing up to what I have actually written. I have never kept up this long with a real journal anyways, so I think the fact that I am still here is telling of my exhibitionist tendencies. While I might recoil at having people recognize who is actual writing this, I secretly crave it. (Well, not so secretly anymore)
The other thing I realized this week was that in starting this blog I have joined the millions of people who write about nothing in the hopes that someone out there will read it. Apparently, I am not alone in my attention seeking. This realization also contributed to my freezing up on the writing front. In my boredom, I have spent (correction, wasted) huge amounts of time paging through other people's blogs in hopes of reading something even remotely interesting. Having failed at finding anything other than self absorbed rantings, it dawned on me that I was one of them. That I have contributed nothing truly original or noteworthy to warrant a repeat visit by any unassuming reader. So why bother generating more junk? This leads nicely to another conclusion reached this week: that the best thing for me to do at this moment in my life is to continue not caring about anything. I will continue to not care about my future, my job, the disarray of our apartment and my utter lack of ambition, for as long as I see fit. With this strategy in place, there is no room to care about whether what I post is relevant, interesting or novel. After all, I should be so lucky to have a reader at all, even if they leave rolling their eyes at the mendacity of it all.
posted by beef at 2:54 PM
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