Happy Blogiversary!

Today is my one-month blogiversary. As an occupation commitmentphobe, I didn’t think I’d last this long. It’s easy to write (well, some days it’s easy to write) but it’s something completely different to show people my writing even when it’s a stubby little paragraph. Generally when I write something, I only have a short window of time before I find myself completely hating it. It makes sticking with a piece hard, but that’s the “job” part of things (and the most difficult part for me). But with this blog, I don’t have the option of abandoning something and pretending I never wrote it. If I hate something the next day, it’s already out there. If I’m murky on an issue of grammar (as I often am) I have to let it go and risk exposing my ignorance. (I nearly published the word segue as segueway until Dan caught it…and it’s a big step, my admitting that here.)

There is no gestational period in the world of blogging. This is an exercise in keeping up. If I spend too long on something, if I think too hard, I’ll miss the window of opportunity to write about it. With the exception of general opinion pieces, I want this thing to be in real time. I have a hard time living in real time. I always seem to be a bit behind or thinking too far into the future. This thing has the ability to keep me in the here and now if I do it right.

Still, I’m not totally sure what “right” is. The beauty (and the nightmare for a perfectionist like me) is that this is a work in progress. I can’t know what I want this to be. It has to become. And the nature of blogging, at least in part, is that it becomes what it will be in front of and as a result of readers. This makes me sooo uncomfortable but it’s why I’m doing this blog in addition to my other “real” writing.

Shoot, this is what keeps me hooked to this gig; while writing now I’m realizing that maybe this is what I’m learning from the whole process as it relates to my other writing. I thought I was supposed to be keeping the muscles warm and getting comfortable with showing my stuff. This is certainly part of it. But maybe I could use this same attitude of letting things “become” with some of my other work. I get so frustrated when my writing doesn’t turn out as I want it to right away, but maybe I need to give it the same space to become what it actually is before judging it.

I remember my 11th grade English teacher instructing us to “Know where you’re going and deliver the goods” when it came to our papers. Maybe that’s good advice for a five-paragraph essay (maybe not) but it’s a bit restrictive for the “creative process.” Some of the best part of writing (and, um, life) is not knowing where you’re going.

When I started this post it was “supposed” to be a piece done in bullets of random thought. (It’s post-sleepova and I didn’t think I had the brain power for much more than that…) But to my surprise, thought happened here. Writing happened here. And what was “supposed” to be, became what it is.

Hopefully that happens to this blog. Shoot, hopefully that happens to me.