Don’t think!

I honestly didn’t think I would make it this far. Two weeks ago I decided to resurrect this old WordPress site for two reasons:

• I have a friend I’m encouraging to start blogging. It’s kind of hard to convince someone to do something when you don’t do it yourself. I want to at least be able to give her some bare bones instruction.
• I am also web administrator for Thistle Rose Academy of Arts, and they want to migrate the site to, you guessed it. So I may as well poke through things now, and get reacquainted before crunch time and I’m pulling out my hair because I can’t figure out how to add an ordered list.

Back in the day, I was more serious about being a blogger. In 2010, I found myself unemployed during the great recession and I needed money. I found out pretty quickly, this is the worst reason to start blogging.

I thought very hard about what to write. What do people want to read? What kind of knowledge can I impart to the masses? What was my expertise? How do I engage? So many things! I would wreck my brain, make a well thought out post with all the right keywords and mechanisms for engagement, and… silence. After a few posts, I’d be done. I had nothing left.

Why is this so different? Maybe part of it is, I don’t really care. I have no agenda. I’m not trying to prove myself. I’m not trying to save the world. I’m just writing. It’s off the cuff. It’s whatever is in my head. Sometimes I have no idea, or I think I have an idea but my brain takes another path. Many times, like now, I’m just lying in bed waiting for the melatonin to kick in and I’m typing away on my phone. I’ll clean it up tomorrow on my PC and add a nice image.

But the important thing is to just keep the keyboard under your fingers. As my literary hero says:

Let there be words, many of them!

Ray Bradbury

Whether it is good or bad, who cares? Now suddenly, I whip out a piece poetry. Check out Insomnia and A journey home. Wha?? The last time I wrote anything like that was forty years ago when I was forced to in a high school English class.

I liked to joked about hating poetry. Hate is too strong of a word, but I’ve been known to make fun of it. I would wave my arms around dramatically and recite:

Birds, and rocks
and flowers and shit

while my friends would give golf claps and beatnik finger-snaps while projecting vibes of the studious elite. Then we’d all laugh and smoke another joint.

I’ve always been more of a short story girl. It’s funny, because to this day, I’ve never written one. But now I’m starting to think never say never. Bradbury also advises:

“Write a hell of a lot of short stories,” he said. Give yourself time to improve; with each week and month, you’ll see your stories improve. He claims that it simply isn’t possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.“
~ Excerpt from the preface of Zen and the art of writing by Ray Bradbury

So what will come out of my brain tomorrow? I’ll have to check back here to find out 😉 In the meantime, I’m going to pick up my copy of Zen and the art of writing.