In Which Teresa H Convinced Me to Ride the Rails Again

We will totally, probably, end up in the ditch. With a mediocre view.

Ahoy, scalliwags! And gentle readers, too. It's been many months (a year?) since I blogged regularly, and a recent phone conversation with a friend stirred my conscience on the topic. I'm something of a conflicted blogger: reluctant to post unless I have a reason, an issue, a point to make. And I'm a hungry reader/writer --- who, once she sets down with her reasons, issues, and points --- has no desire to look away. I want to stare these moments down and bend them to my will ~ elucidating, trading jabs, hearing your point of view, indulging in merriment and back-slapping. (Very pious, enlightened, back-slapping in the service of Rome, of course...)

In any case, I find none of this benefits my small children, my home environment, or really anything much beyond my desires to learn. Which are morally neutral, if fed moderately.  But I repeat: nothing I ever write in a blog post will benefit my kids or my husband in a concrete way. The demands on my time are real, and the hours are limited, and I have such discipline problems anyway! To write the way I want to had became a bygone urge. I also dislike how much it requires more than a bit of navel-gazing, on matters small and large ~ it seems ultimately unhealthy to focus so much on one's self and points of view. So ... do you like the new pink digs? ;)

But my friend, insightful and gentle, she wasn't prodding me to return, just observing. She said simply, "You're probably a bit of a perfectionist about it, too." And that made sense. It set me free.

So what if I cannot grant the world a treatise on some topic which is dear and interesting? The only thing at risk is my ego. Frankly, I found stunning (to me) success when I wrote to you about stuff I consider captivating. But it froze me a bit. For if I couldn't elicit immediate re-posting among the cool kids' sites, the doubt set in. I resolve not to inhabit those mental spaces, but to settle in and re-tool my own motivations, if not my message. I have some writing projects in the hopper that aren't for an online audience, per se, but will require me to hone my skills considerably. I can use this blog for writing practice.

My beef with blogging is deep and wide, but the joys are worth considering. So I'm setting out to do it a little bit differently, with an intentional aim of beating perfectionism. My posts may be brief, and boring, and backwards while I sort out how this works now. Which is all to say, it may end up as nothing more than a live journal about my cats. You're still invited. I sincerely thank you for reading.