Fear of Blogging

You wouldn't know it from the number and frequency of my posts, but I think about blogging all the time. Before I launched this baby blog, I thought about writing all the time. Letters to the editor, magazine articles, curriculum guides, non-fiction, fiction...it spins in my head like clothes in the washer all day long. Now I think about snippets of bloggage...phrases I like, thoughts I think, reactions to daily events, reviews of books I've read, responses to others' blogs.

Why then, the inaction? The inability to put fingers to keyboard and press PUBLISH?

Some of it is discipline and opportunity. I am a notorious procrastinator, having gotten away with it all my life while earning good grades and good reviews and good evaluations in my jobs. I'm the person rushing around the house 30 minutes before the in-laws arrive, cursing my lack of cleanliness. I'm the girl waiting outside the computer lab fifteen minutes before that big paper is due because her printer ran out of ink. So I put off the posts until someone else is on the computer, and then I use that as an excuse to get grouchy.

Some of it, though, is plain old perfectionism. It's no secret that perfectionism is a self-defeating and self-sabotaging behavior. I fear failure, so I don't take up something I can't be perfect at. I exercise for weeks and when I start to get close to my goal, I eat like crap because having that margin of non-achievement of goal allows me to rationalize poor choices.

I realized, too, that I was afraid no one would be interested in what I'd have to say, particularly about knitting. I'm late to this blog game, and I kept thinking, well, anything I'd have to say has been said before. No one wants to hear about my socks and what kind of heel stitch I used. No one cares what I think about the book March and whether I think it should have won the Pulitzer or not. (Not.)

This hypothetical audience is paralyzing me.

But what the hell? Who am I writing this for, anyway? Who is my audience? The blogs I read I read because I like what they have to say and HOW they say it. The care they take with their photos, the humor they use, the bravery to lay up selected details of their lives for the scrutiny of others.

So I'm resolving to post each day until May 11 as part of my trifecta of birthday goals:

1. Exercise/be active every day
2. Post to peertrainer.com every day
3. Post to knitsmith-wordpurl every day

I think I just need to get over myself and write.