The Truth About Blogging

The Saturday morning routine goes like this.  I wake up, jump out of bed, rush to the computer with fantastic creative ideas streaming from my brain cells, and I type the blog.  Greg supplies coffee refills. The creative ideas dance from my brain through my fingers, flowing effortlessly until the final product is ready for posting.  All of this wonderfully energetic translation of ideas happens easily and is fuelled only by regular coffee.  If you believe all that, I have several unicorns we are breeding on the acreage and you can sign up for your future unicorn by responding to this post in the comment section below.

As is true of many things in life, including the existence of unicorns, the truth is not as straight forward or as simple as one might envision.  Sometimes, like last week, encased in a 4 a.m. coffee deprived brain-fog on my way to the airport I completely forget to write the blog.  After three years of spending my Saturday mornings writing a blog, it amazes me that a little change to routine short circuits my memory that way.  Obviously I desperately need coffee to keep things straight in the early hours of the morning.

Occasionally the coffee runs out before the creative process is complete, or I'm in a different city than Greg and I have to make coffee in a hotel room.  Somehow making my own coffee seems to be a stretch.  Two weeks ago it wasn't just a stretch it was disastrous.  The hotel room had a machine capable of making one or two cups, the human only needed to set it up correctly.  I set the knob to two cups, poured in enough water for two cups, set only one cup in the machine and walked across the room to begin blogging.  There were only two packets of coffee in the room and both were used up.  Only one cup had coffee in it and it was over flowing.  The remainder of the precious coffee needed for the writing exercise was streaming down the credenza and soaking into the carpet.  I nearly wept over spilled coffee.

Without the coffee, the ideas don't dance at all and the screen remains a glaring white blank space.  I tell you, it glares at me challenging me to get the gumption to put some words on it, any words.  It is like a Mexican standoff between the computer, my brain, and my fingers.  The harder the computer screen glares, the less likely my brain is to formulate ideas or my fingers to type words.  And so I look for inspiration on the bookshelf.  I surf the net about unicorns.  I ponder the faith angle, the encouragement route, the comedic approach, or a political statement.  Then Greg appears with the coffee refill, looks at the glaring angry white blankness of the computer screen and asks, "How's it going?"

I respond, "Fabulous darling!" as I fling my purple feather boa over my shoulder and pet my unicorn.  Out of the ridiculousness of the question and the pain of writer's block, I resort to telling you about the reality of the Saturday morning blog instead of feeding the mythical images that you might have conjured up.  Some weeks it is easy to write, and other weeks it is painful.  Sometimes I wonder if I should keep writing or if I should stop.  I question whether what I am writing is helping, humouring, or entertaining.  I am not looking for validation; I am acknowledging that every human alive deals with chirping voices of inadequacy.

When those chirping voices get the loudest I can easily lose perspective and begin to imagine that everyone else owns a wildly successful unicorn business and writes best selling material on a weekly basis.  Now you know the truth about Saturday mornings and me.  I forget stuff - important stuff.  I have trouble making a simple cup of coffee in a hotel room.  The ideas don't always dance from my brain to my fingers.  There are mornings when sheer grit and tenacity make the difference in a stare down with the computer screen, and when all else fails I don my feather boa and pet my unicorn.

Comments

  1. You're a wonder, Joy! You're not finished mining yet, me thinks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Crow: Day One
    Hmmm, not finished "mining". Interesting visual I get from your use of that word in relation to the literary venture!
    Joy

    ReplyDelete

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