Something occurred to me this week. I love to make random asides about things, but rarely do so in conversation. (There's some lingering anxiety in me that speaking out of turn to poke fun at or rant about something will always be taken amiss.) For the last ten years, I've fed that desire electronically; in one and two-line blog posts for the greatest part of time, and then more recently, the last two years or so, via facebook and twitter. That kind of writing pattern let's me entertain and keep in touch with friends -- superficially -- in easy, conversational ways when we're split by states, continents, and oceans. And it's let me make new friends, too, namely Clay, and Katie, and Erica, and Kathryn (who bounces to different blogs almost as routinely as I do). But given how easy it is for me to make a pithy, throw-away statement about something and then move on, especially with the 140-character and 255-character limits of status updates, I've realized that I'm not saying much of substance anymore.
In part, that's because every waking minute (and many of my dreaming ones) are full of substance requiring constant conversation and update-reports, on topics that keep my mental wheels spinning on over-drive. When I first started blogging, my nearest (and dearest) friends were a four-hour drive away, I was working one full-time and two-part-time jobs (all of which bored me to near-tears on a daily basis), and experiencing pretty much the worst year of my life; long, rambling, emo posts about random books I was reading, music I'd rediscovered, characters and story lines I'd dreamed into existence, and my agony over the daily awareness that my vocal strength was fading were easier to come by when there was nothing more interesting to do.
And in another way, it's because I really do enjoy real conversation more than writing in some ways. Perhaps enjoy is the wrong word -- it's more that I get to converse less and have to write more, particularly at this time of year when the even smallest things I produce go through about 14 drafts of review before they're finalized. That, combined with spending ten or twelve straight hours at a desk with no time for a lunch break, let alone writing more than a bit of text requiring more than 18 seconds worth of thought, makes developing anything of substance too daunting to spend much energy on.
The downside, though, is that I'm becoming far less interesting. Because I'm only really writing for work, my topics are limited, my medium is limited (really, how many ways *are* there to pen mass-market -- and even segmented-market -- emails?), and my focus of study is limited. Gone are the days of reading a different Wikipedia article every morning with a cup of tea and my oatmeal, learning something new, letting it whirl away in the back of my mind and find a home among the treasure trove of useless information I've accumulated over the years. Gone are the stolen moments of political debate, the dissection of minute literary details, the philosophical ponderings around new questions. They've been replaced by great focus and breadth around a few key areas, which don't make for interesting topics of conversation or debate outside of the technical philanthropic sector.
It's time to keep from boring myself and everyone else.
November is "National Novel Writing Month" -- an event that I have signed up to participate in no less than five times, and failed at within ten days during each of those attempts. It has spawned many "write a certain amount of X every day for a month" subset programs, including NaBloPoMo -- National Blog Posting Month. I'm not so out-of-touch with my need for sleep that I'll attempt to write a novel in thirty days, but I am going to work on the NaBloPoMo thing again. A post a day, every day, for thirty days. Something of substance -- a question, a reaction, a photograph and caption and comment or explanation, an exclamation over something lovely and new-to-me. Not a list, not a light little rant, not a cop-out. My official participation starts now, and goes through November 30.
Nothing like coming up with an idea and making a commitment without thinking it all the way through. :) I'm feeling a little intimidated. In a good way. Time to get out of my comfort zone and shake things up.
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