Wasting Time

I cannot believe that I have just sat here in my office and wasted at least an hour reading, not a blog, but the comments on a blog. On sleep methods for six or something month olds. What the hell?! I mean, I do not give a rat's patooty about the subject and I certainly don't give one about what other bloggers think about the subject. And yet I scroll...... hanging on every meaningless (to me) word.

I think I'm mentally ill. I have two books to read for next week, an essay to revise (one that I'm reading in public in Oxford on Saturday, no less), four papers, no five, that are already past due. I think I'm mentally ill...oh I already said that. Must be true.

How in the world can I get on track?

Is there a support group for blog addicts???? Apparently it's a real thing: I googled it (the phrase "blogging addiction") and came back with no less than 13K hits. Yep, that's thirteen thousand hits, like this one, for instance.

So, I'm off to read EVERY SINGLE MEANINGLESS WORD OF THEM.......... grad school will have to wait.

genius in the age of verbosity

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it's been a while. i had promised myself that i would write everyday and THEN i got this awful comment from a reader of my work (elsewhere) that i'm too self-conscious. well, that sent me for a tailspin, writing wise.

so, i've been holed up in my head thinking about whether or not that's true, whether or not that matters, and whether or not i should give a rat's patooty what this guy thinks. and then i read a david sedaris book - naked. at first i said (in my head to my friend), "yeah, then, you go to hell you hater" cause mr. sedaris seems pretty self-conscious to me and people LOVE him. and then i thought, well, can there be more than one david sedarisey kind of writer? now, i imagine you may be rolling your eyes, sniggering that "you may be decent, but you ain't no d.s. so the anology is moot," and fine, fine, i thought that too, but i'm just wondering what the "market" will bear in the case of compulsive confessional writing. has the internet, blogging, watered down writing so that everyone's a genius, rendering no one a genius?
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To Tell or Not To Tell

I had a strange experience yesterday evening. I told a friend that I like to blog and she said wow me too and asked for my blogger address. I dunno, but I sort of freaked out. I mean, what is this really? And to whom am I writing?

Is a blog a journal? It would seem that that would be private, or at least anonymous. But this really isn't either of those things. I suppose it's just a collection of thoughts, but that's what I'm worried about: the nature of my thoughts.

As I've mentioned before, I think I'm a bit schizophrenic. Not in the clinical way, just in my opinions/thoughts/feelings. I'm a walking juxtaposition. And it scares me. Does it just really mean that I'm a hypocrite or a mamby pamby or wishy washy? I don't think the latter two - but I'm actually worried about the former. It's not that I say things or do things that I don't mean or that are really true for me (ugh, I hate that phrase "true for me," maybe I mean true of me). It's that those things so often don't seem to be possible genuine simultaneous actions or feelings. I thought that as I grew older I'd become more consistent in my views, yet the opposite has happened.

So, anyhow, it kind of freaks me out to think about people I know reading my garbage, though I do know of a couple of people who occasionally check in on this highly trafficked blog (ha ha).

Oh boy am I hating this entry - but I read somewhere to just go with and let yourself be embarrassing and stupid. So here it is.

Welcome Amoreena, now you'll really know how cuckoo I am and now you can worry about trusting me with your money!

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Can I Get An Amen?

I honestly don't know how to solicit, elicit or attract commentary, or commenters - I really, really hate the 'word' commentator because commentate is not a word so the doer of said non-existent verb, also does not exist: non existence by non association - ok I looked it up and commentate is in fact a word, but I'm willing to bet, though my inadequate etymology reference leaves me wanting, that it is a malapropism, if not a pandering instance like the addition of 'ain't' to the dictionary - to this blog (you forgot that I was in the middle of a sentence, didn't you?). I don't know if I really care (not about your forgetfulness, but about the comments).

I'm not about to e-mail my friends (the two or three that are computer literate enough to find a blog, or know what one is) and say, "please, please come read my rambling musings (a newly overused and somewhat contrived word, I think), and give me your thoughts...." It's hard enough to get people to read my shit when I print it out on clean white (bright white, I like bright white) paper.

So what do I have to do? Show my tits?
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Schizophrenic Writer

So, I'm on day three, or four, is it? of this blogging thing, and just as I had feared: I'm terribly boring. And this ain't so great considering the fact that I consider myself a writer.

I have the worst time trying to decide WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT. I imagine that's a common problem, to some extent. For me, the problem is generated in large part by the fact that I am two people (at least) and I find myself exposing my severest contradictions in my writing. I want to write authentically, but is seems that what is authentic for me on the one hand is a bunch of bull, a total lie, a misrepresentation, or a half-truth on the other hand. Does this make sense?

Half of me is a lusty liberal who likes to smoke pot and cuss like a sailor. Most of this "me's" friends are gay, atheist, pro-choice and voted for John Kerry. The other me goes to the silkiest of silk-stocking churches, and has close friends who send their kids to evangelical schools, vote Republican, are staunchly pro-life, and believe that homosexuality is a sin.

I'm a mixture of both sets of friends. And this inhibits my writing. Half of the stuff I write is protestant theology (I know, snore), the other half is reflective essays - which are a bit whitewashed (though quite good, I've been told by people who actually count - I've one four writing prizes in the past year). I've either got to find a way to tell my stories without cleaning them up (maybe I'll use a pseudonym) or I've got to get brave and just be who I am. Yikes!

Here We Go, But Not Really

So, I guess it begins here. It may as well.

I have been intrigued by this blogging thing and have lately found myself whittling away way too much time having the bizarre voyeuristic experience of reading people's blogs whom I know. It's a sort of anonymous cyber-peeping tom, though they know I, or at least someone, am/is watching. For some reason I have become totally wrapped up in one particular blog called purty mommy by an aquaintance of mine who is a mom (obviously). I'm not a mom, nor ever will be, but I just hang on her every word. It's not that I'm envious at all, I just am finding it fascinating reading about breast feeding (the one thing about motherhood that I kinda crave), attachment parenting (sounds AWFUL!!!), cleaning up spit-up..... Go figure. Perhaps it's because I'm that desperate to NOT be doing what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing......

I'm supposed to be writing my thesis and can't seem to get going, so I thought I would do this instead. Maybe it will get my juices going. At this point it's becoming both ridiculous and dire. I started out great guns at the beginning of the semester and had the absurd interruption of oral surgery in the middle of the semester - knocking me on my wide ass for almost two weeks! So all I've got is pages and pages of notes pasted from journals and a meandering thought process which just won't coalesce. However, I have rambled on about the subject to unsuspecting inquirers to such an extent in the last couple of days that I might just be on the precipice of beginning.

But, still, I'm typing away in this blog - that no one will likely read (seems kind of silly and mastubatory, but, what the hell). Ugh - don't know what my problem is!!!!