A BLOG is for....

Bear says the blog is for me, and I should write what I want to write in it. I haven't decided yet if he is right. The truth is, the things that I write that are JUST for me, I write by hand in a notebook or journal. No one else gets to see them. I think that by nature of putting my thoughts on the web, making them public for friends and family... they are no longer the thoughts that are just for me. They are the thoughts that I want to share.

But I liked Bear's comment, because it got me thinking.

Why do I want a Blog? Mostly, because I enjoy other people's Blog's. And you know, most things I enjoy, I want to try for myself. But the difficulty in this approach is...the thing I enjoy most about other people's Blogs is the humor. (specially Maven's). Yet the appeal of being a Maven wanna-be isn't a sustaining appeal. Not a motivating one certainly. (Plus, sometimes being defeated at the grocery store was depressing enough when it happened. Likewise, wondering around the house with a crockpot full of potato soup looking for an outlet ...yes potato soup... because every single flat surface is covered either in plastic or clutter that was relocated from the kitchen might have some entertainment value, but again, doesn't make a high enough priority to motivate me to blog. Or isn't motivation enough for me to prioritize blogging. Take your pick.)

And I knew right away what I didn't want my blog to be. I didn't want it to become a diary of the wonderful things Sweetling did that day. Not that Sweetling doesn't do wonderful things, she does. But I wanted my Blog to be more about me.

So what do I want my blog to be?

I still don't know exactly, but...

I was talking with HoneyBee last night. She wants to work on improving her writing so she can write better papers, in less time, and with less frustration, for school. My advice to her was...the first step she needed to take was to give herself permission to write. Her own internal criticism is so loud and so strong and so everpresent, it drowns out her 'voice' and is the foremost obsticle to getting any of her thoughts on paper. Just overcoming that voice, or ignoring it long enough, to scratch out a few words is such an intense battle it leaves her exhausted and frustrated and unable to actually focus on what she's writing. All of her energy and reserves goes into try to fight her way past the negative voices and she has little left to put into her writing.

Sometimes too, I told her, we get so caught up in the process of what we WANT something to be, so caught up in its ideal...that we don't give ourselves permission to enjoy what is. We never give ourselves permission to simply do something for the sake of doing it, because we are stymied by thinking if we can't do it the "right" way...we shouldn't do it at all. Or we should keep "planning" it and working at it till its perfect. It will never be perfect, so it will never be "completed" and we wind up feeling defeated and depressed over something that could have been uplifting and energizing.

In short, I decided to take a dose of my own medicine. To quit worrying about what my ideal blog might look like, to stop fretting over what I wanted it to be....and just give myself permission to write.

I'm leaving with a short, sad vigniette. This is written in a FlyLady email by a woman who was helping her sister clean and declutter her home. I identified with the sister in the cluttered home.

I went up a few weeks ago to help her organize and watch my dear
nephews. I tried to help her fling out things and I think she was able
to dispose of a bit, but one of the things she refused to part with
was a plastic doll's head from her childhood. The image of her
clutching that doll's head is so impressed on my mind. I ache for her,
and it helped me understand for the first time this monster you call
Clutter. He has her clinging to a broken piece of the past, while all
around her runs her future. But Clutter keeps throwing all her stuff
in her face. "Why haven't you found this doll a new body yet? I
thought you loved her and your dead mom who gave her to you. You are
such a failure."

Isn't it a pity that we can't go in and kill Clutter for the people we
love? But he wouldn't really be dead, would he? He'd still be in their
minds. That's where I fight him most, in my cluttered thoughts.

So, maybe I'm Blogging today, because having started a blog...I couldn't seem to move past just one entry. That single entry stared at me like the broken dolls head. I either needed to toss it, or find a body for it.

I'm finding a body for it.