Here I go.

Monday, ‎June ‎20, ‎2011 20:13:55

I feel like I'm going to explode. Too much coming in, pressurizing what's already in there, plus what's trying to be created in there, what's germinating gestating mutating connecting interlocking building. Every day I arrive at point after point where I want to write, where an opinion wants out (Yes, it’s going to be that kind of blog. Maybe give it a chance, maybe hunh, whattaya think? ‘kay.)  And I’m fed up. I put off, excuse, avoid deprioritize and generally let any damned thing that comes along get in the way of me. Me. The person I’m supposed to take care, ‘cause it’s no one else’s responsibility. Instead, there’s always something else to deal with: the job, the pulled hamstring, the waistline, planning a vacation, doing the dishes, prepping for meeting after meeting of organizations that god-help-me I not only volunteered for but in a couple of cases campaigned to be on. And, god help the voters, got elected. And the work I do there just doesn’t cut it.

Even managed to put this off until the end of the day through the indecision of what to call the blog. First I wanted to name it after the sobriquet my wife and my best friend gave me. (Yes, two different people, yet both can be called best friend, while only one (this ain’t Utah) can be called wife.) Then I was listening to a David Shuster interview (y’know, he’s got another spy novel out. Yea, me either.0 and he remarked on the requirements of his twice-weekly WaPo column: twice-weekly, 750 words.

Now, several years back, listening to a Krugman interview, I believe he’d remarked that the usual is 800 words. Perhaps his editors at the NYT are afforded the writer’s gift of being given something to do. My mom, a journalist and an editor, was certainly not the only person to advise on the use of ‘really’ and ‘very’ as well as the occasional foul word, so that editors would feel useful. So Shuster is perhaps leaving nothing for his editors to do. Or perhaps the requirement of writing to eighth-graders, the standard for most newspapers (I’m not kidding, although by now they could be shooting lower,) may have been amended for a shorter attention span, (as these parentheticals demonstrate mine.) So in utter frustration with myself, I decided to set myself a goal. 750 words. A day. For a year. (A year? Yes. You’ll never make it. I can try. Let’s see you do it. I can try. Yea right. Oh, eff you, too.)

And with that great conflict in mind, I went off to find a blog name that would exemplify that goal. Now, I’ve given in, twice to a daily writing goal, and once, succeeded. I wrote a book in 30 days during a fit of NaNoWriMo. It’s a seasonal disease, with an eleven-month gestation period (used that word twice,. Will I need a Thesaurus? Oh, I have one, don’t I? Oops, guess I don’t. Put that on the to-do-some-day list,) followed by a  30-day outbreak of feverish writing, culminating in a 50,000 word novel. It really cuts into the Thanksgiving family visit. Which, in many cases, may not be a bad thing. (Side bar: can anyone recommend a good typing tutorial software package? This is mostly one + two finger typing.) So, back to looking for a blog name.

Imagine my surprise when one of the blog names I thought up turned out to be an exact match for my efforts, in every way. It was named “my750.blogspot.com”, and used a ‘cluttered desk’ metaphor CSS, with a scrap of lined notebook paper, a blank calendar sheet, and a couple of the other typical pieces of manufactured paper that end up on the desks of most paper magnets like me. And, near the top, the blogholder’s self-stated goal is 750 words a day. NaNoWriMo is even mentioned as part of his/her inspiration for starting that blog. Damn it, that was the name I wanted for my blog.  It was almost exactly the blog page I’d have created if this person hadn’t beaten me to it.

And it is a lesson to me. Because it hasn’t got another word on it from the owner. It sits there, waiting, the empty desk of someone inspired and then distracted, who wandered off, whose goal is attended to with the same care that mine is.

Well, fuck that.

So this is mine. It will range, and it will rant, and it will ponder and it will cry and then bay at the moon. It will be what I want it to be.

Finally. One goddamned thing that is mine. Unedited.  

779 ~ Monday, June 20, 2011 20:57:18