I’ve been kind of quiet lately, blog-wise, for several reasons.
Mainly, I just haven’t been able to get into it. When I come home from work, I’d really rather just chill in the recliner, check Twitter and Facebook on my iPhone, watch the news and Travel Channel, maybe read a book. Most days, I don’t even turn on my computer in the evenings anymore — and if I do, it’s to do some genealogy work or scan some photos or sync my iPhone or iPod.
Then there’s the fact that I tend to self-censor a lot more heavily than I used to. There are the “nobody really cares about this” subjects, like what I ate for dinner or what I bought online; there are the “I’m not ready to share this” subjects, like major life-altering stuff (which doesn’t come up often, thankfully); then there are the “I should really keep this to myself” subjects, like when I get pissed at someone and really want to vent, or when I play hookey from work (not like I would ever actually do that).
Once I finally come up with a blog-worthy topic, it’s either so in-depth that it would take actual research and writing and editing (see lazy streak, above), or it’s a timely topic that I procrastinate too long over, so it’s no longer relevant by the time I sit down to write it. Long gone are the days of me sitting down at my computer after dinner and basically writing a Dear Diary entry about my day. Also long gone are the days of me working a job that’s so slow and tedious that I can write a blog entry at work, e-mail it to myself, then post it when I get home.
One thing that’s kept me from blogging, too, is Twitter. Topics that once would have taken several hundred words to cover now get covered in 140 characters. No buildup, no lead-in, no drawn-out resolve; just the meat and the meaning, distilled to quasi-poetic brevity.
I also have a physical journal in which I write longhand every night or so, just to clear my mind. It’s quite therapeutic, and helpful for getting stuff out that I can’t (or shouldn’t) share with the entire internet (see self-censorship, above). It’s definitely a help to be able to write down those things that aren’t suitable for public consumption. It was a habit I clung to back in junior high, high school, and most of college. After college, I started blogging, and my physical journaling became sporadic; random notebooks, or text files on my computer, or scraps of paper (usually intended as blog notes for later). It’s about time I started journaling again.
I’m going to try to start blogging a little more regularly, too, but I make no promises.