I heard a phrase today that’s stuck to the gooshy gray matter sitting between my ears ever since. It seems to have stirred up a few of the cobwebs up there. “Analysis paralysis” they called it, the state of being stuck in planning-before-acting mode, of trying to have everything perfect before you embarked on some new task or lifestyle change. It’s a phrase that fits me so well I feel like I could print it out on one of those “Hi, I’m…” and stick it to my chest.
I have had this blog registered for two long years. Two years of procrastinating, occasionally logging in to change the site design, then hesitating a few torturous moments over a blank post page. Only to log back out, and ignore the neglected little blog, waiting eagerly and hungrily for some sort of content, and then repeating the process every 3 or 4 months.
There was a distinct pattern to my log ins, however. When I was unsure of what I was taking in school, I’d log in thinking “I want to write.” When I felt like my job was sucking my soul out, and leeching any remaining spot of creativity I had left in me, “I want to write”. When I felt lonely, disconnected, even more internalized then usual, “I want to write.” When I felt despair about my future, or the world, or a moment of cruelty or kindness beamed so hard through my brain that it felt unbearable not to document it before it slipped away, “I want to write.” What I want to do with my life, what I spend my spare time reading and dreaming about, the sort of people I feel the need to make a connection to, it all comes back down to ONE very simple thing; writing. If your mind, body and soul are telling, no, screaming at you constantly to create, to act, to at LEAST DO SOMETHING, then why deny yourself the thing you want the most? It’s not like my most innate desire is to set fire to puppy orphanages or anything else ridiculous, so here I am forcing myself to move past my anxieties about blogging and, well, blogging.
So why have I waited so long to start? It’s laughable now, but I couldn’t decide what my first post should be about. Should I just leap write in as though I’d be writing for years? Introduce myself formally? Or should I make an About page for that? And what would this blog even be about? Should it be personal, or political, or academic, or offer some sort of advice or service? Should I keep the fact that I was blogging away from family and friends? (YES YES YES, this was the only easy one).
I still can’t say I know exactly what this journal will be about; I’m scatterbrained, eclectic, and easily distracted by shiny things. And I can’t say if I’ll ever attract any more than one reader (my cat reading over my shoulder counts, right??). But I AM going to write.
