Blogger Block

A friend recently suggested to me that blogging was a sign of desperation.  I get where he was coming from when he made the joke (and he was joking- kind of).  Sometimes I agree with him.  More often not.  Writing a personal blog has two undeniable benefits in my opinion.  One, it is a journal which helps you focus your thoughts and reflect on them, allowing you to develop your own perspective and grow as a person (cheesy but true).  Two, by existing in a public forum, a blog also immediately becomes a part of the new great social experiment, so that, while you are growing and exploring your own thoughts, you are also inviting others to join you in a conversation.  For me, this second element, this 'invisible' audience, provides the added benefit of keeping me at my keyboard- I have always been more productive when I imagine accountability. 

http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/resident/ouellette2/

So, it is all the more frustrating when I arrive at a place like I have this evening, with some spare time to sit down and write, but absolutely no idea what I should write about.  If I were writing in a personal journal, nights like this would end in an annoying entry describing my irritating day of car issues, a run away dog, and a four year old with a LOT of snot pouring from his nose.  I would come back to that entry and find it annoying and that might be the beginning of the end of my journaling for a while.  With a blog, I find I don't go as far as to finish what seems to fall in the annoying, pointless category (this, of course, being completely subjective- you're probably trying to will me to go on about the car troubles, right?)  Instead, I start to type on a topic, then delete, start anew, delete.  Needless to say, I feel stuck between wanting to build on this thing I've started, but not knowing where the next block should go.

So is this what real writers go through?  Does pushing through this feeling make me a little bit more of a writer myself?  Does blogging count?  

http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/resident/ouellette2/

I really never sat down and wrote much of anything beside a few angst filled songs in my teens until I moved back to the farm and started writing articles for the farm newsletter.  [Click here for most recent]  I didn't like it very much when I first started writing those articles either, but somehow over the years, I began to look forward to the opportunity to write for a purpose.  Lately, I even started longing for it.  So, the urge to write, and (maybe?) desperation, have made me a blogger.  New town, aimless feeling, could this help?

Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks this might be productive.  There are something like 65 million blogs in existence-- maybe more.  Somewhere, right now, someone else is sitting frozen at their computer, trying to figure out what to say tonight.  Someone else is clicking away, getting down their inspiration as fast as their fingers will allow.  People reference their blogs on resumes and websites, print out blog business cards, sell movie rights to their blog stories.  So, the answer?   I think the blog is helping me find my voice and that it might become a great resource for me.  The blogs I follow tend to be more purposeful than this hodge podge that I'm throwing out, but I think that might be part of my process.  Whether or not it makes me a writer?  Meh.  For now, I'll just be a blogger.

P.S.  For some reason I can't get the image of Jean Luc Picard in his quarters at then end of a Star Trek episode,  Check it out Captains Log