Leading off
Yes, I am now a blogger.
I've been trying to write more, and I even restarted a daily journal. It fell flat. I'd either be too tired after work to write or get too busy with other things on my night off. Same old me, start up some writing project, get too sidetracked to continue.
So my solution was to start this blog. Yes, I might get sidetracked on this too, but I'm oddly optimistic. Here's why: With a journal, there's a pressure to update every day (in the past, I've updated days after, trying to recollect a past day, writing a play-by-play rather than what I was thinking that day) that doesn't quite exist with a blog. Yes, it's nice to update a blog as much as possible, but I doubt I'll feel guilty if I don't (unlike a journal, in which the guilt for not updating can keep building until you just give up).
Besides, I'm not looking to journal here so much as to write. No fiction, not here anyway, but just writing. For several months, I've had notebooks conveniently available, in the car, at work, in the stroller, whenever I get an urge to just start writing. I want this blog to be another notebook, but hopefully, a primary outlet to be creative. Yes, some posts will be more journal-esque, describing and reflecting upon the events of the day. But others will not, and will reflect everything I was writing on my own, ranging from deep, thoughtful exposition to silly nostalgia.
Since I dropped down to part-time, one of my goals was to write more -- more than I ever had before. When I told my sister of my plans to work less at the newspaper, she said something I haven't forgotten, something that resonated with my decision: "When you were younger, you never said you wanted to grow up to be an editor." Though the desire to write more wasn't in the top three on the list of reasons we chose to scale back my work schedule, it was on the list. Maybe this blog will help me better realize that goal. Maybe it won't, but I'm going to give it a shot.
I've been trying to write more, and I even restarted a daily journal. It fell flat. I'd either be too tired after work to write or get too busy with other things on my night off. Same old me, start up some writing project, get too sidetracked to continue.
So my solution was to start this blog. Yes, I might get sidetracked on this too, but I'm oddly optimistic. Here's why: With a journal, there's a pressure to update every day (in the past, I've updated days after, trying to recollect a past day, writing a play-by-play rather than what I was thinking that day) that doesn't quite exist with a blog. Yes, it's nice to update a blog as much as possible, but I doubt I'll feel guilty if I don't (unlike a journal, in which the guilt for not updating can keep building until you just give up).
Besides, I'm not looking to journal here so much as to write. No fiction, not here anyway, but just writing. For several months, I've had notebooks conveniently available, in the car, at work, in the stroller, whenever I get an urge to just start writing. I want this blog to be another notebook, but hopefully, a primary outlet to be creative. Yes, some posts will be more journal-esque, describing and reflecting upon the events of the day. But others will not, and will reflect everything I was writing on my own, ranging from deep, thoughtful exposition to silly nostalgia.
Since I dropped down to part-time, one of my goals was to write more -- more than I ever had before. When I told my sister of my plans to work less at the newspaper, she said something I haven't forgotten, something that resonated with my decision: "When you were younger, you never said you wanted to grow up to be an editor." Though the desire to write more wasn't in the top three on the list of reasons we chose to scale back my work schedule, it was on the list. Maybe this blog will help me better realize that goal. Maybe it won't, but I'm going to give it a shot.
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