To Blog or Not to Blog

After the sun has risen but the city still sleeps, I look outside my apartment and wonder whether I should start a blog. The weather has already begun to warm after a week-long cold snap of rain, snow, and closed windows. But now the windows are open. Cool, spring, morning air drifts in and carries the hum of a flying jet underlying the whistles and yelps of a screaming siren. But the jet and ambulance travel on, and it’s quiet again. Cottonwood cotton is floating in the air. Tufts rise, fall, float left and right, back and forth. They drift round and round everywhere. This is what it must look like if you could shrink yourself down and plop yourself into a glass of freshly poured 7 Up. The white, fluffy fairies finally collect into a downy surface on the concrete butting against the grass or in the downspout splash blocks on building corners. It’s almost magical. Almost. I’m sure that somewhere someone’s sneezing.

I tell myself — today. Today, I will write. Today, I will launch a blog. Today, I will spew out thoughts to the clusterfuck of commentary that is the internet. And I will panic when it’s time to hit submit. Will I be hated, ignored, laughed at, scorned? Will I watch my faux-friend counts on social media dwindle to nothing? Or to avoid such fates, will I polish and polish until there’s nothing left to post? I try to tell myself not to dread these things I’ve imagined. I try to remind myself that these things are just that — imaginings. And of course, it never works. Will this blog fail like my last one? How will I grow an audience? I try to tell myself there’s nothing to fear. Do I really even have anything to say? Is it worth saying? Am I worthy enough to say it?

These are the wrong questions. I can’t waste my time trying to assuage my fear or self-esteem. Trying to build up myself on a quest to determine if I’m a good person would only result in falsely hyperbolizing how wonderful I am. It’s like a participation trophy without the participation. It’s an existence trophy. I exist, therefore I deserve.

What is this even about? Ahh. Now there’s an actually decent question. Does it need to be done? An even better question. These are the right questions. They refocus the value onto the act instead of the actor. We’re usually told that believing in ourselves allows us to act. But really all that’s required is to think the action is valuable regardless of our self-valuations. I don’t eat because I’m worth it. I eat because it’s necessary.

So what is this about? Saying what needs to be said. That’s it. And there’s only one way to do that — say it as well as I can. What does it mean to say something well? Stay tuned. That’s one of the things I’m going to figure out. Maybe that’s what this is really about, which makes this a project of discovery as much as it’s one for display.

What to say…how to say it…these are my topics to explore:
• Why people think and do what they think and do
• The nature of art and creativity
• How language works
• How all this applies to writing — literary and marketing

And now the morning is waking up. Someone is drilling. Construction is commencing. Someone opens and shuts a car door. The engine roars to life. Movement is afoot. (Or maybe movement is a tire?) And the morning has kept it’s cool with all this activity. The chilled wind still hums through the open window, but the sun promises heat later. The perfect day to start to say what needs to be said.