NOTE

As I continue to work on things away from this blog (which is a collection of Free-Time/Casual Online Writing, Remarks, And Notes By ME Whelan) and continue to figure out what goes and what stays of my existing online-writing, the de-emphasizing of one or another continues as well....

Thursday, February 25, 2016

An Old Post From An Old Blog (I Don't Know.... It Seemed Worth Posting)

(transfer post)

 
As I've been trying to get organized with my online writing, my ultimate aim is to make this particular blog just the one place where I can post whatever I feel like posting.  With a "zillion" blogs or "whatever else" in varying stages of development, I've been trying to trim down, consolidate and/or at least bring up-to-date much of the stuff I have.

Like going through an old trunk (or maybe a garage that has collected things that really ought to go), I found a blog that I started a few years back.  It has no posts.  I'll delete it, but I like its look and simplicity.  I may actually change the looks of this blog, but sometimes choosing a look for something like a blog is largely mood-dependent.  It's not that I'm someone who has mood swings, or anything like that.  It's more, however, that I like so many different types of looks (for things like web pages) that I can have trouble deciding which look I want for which page.

Anyway, I thought twice (more than twice, actually) before posting this here because what's here are the text/"introduction" blocks from that long forgotten blog.  Some of what I wrote back then is outdated. 

Still, as I read the words about my motivation for starting that blog, I realized that it's kind of a "time-capasule type of thing".  Then, too, much of what I wrote then still applies in some ways.

My aim for this (the one you're on now) blog is to have that one place to write whatever I feel like writing starting today - not re-posting old stuff (at least not unless I think the old stuff is worth moving here from somewhere else).

As I continue to spend whatever time or energy I have (for the online-writing stuff) cleaning up and cleaning out any number of things, I just haven't really had the time to just start "really writing" on this blog.

Mostly because the "time-capsule" words from the about-to-be-deleted blog pretty much describe my aims/plans for this particular one, I decided to copy them (and the picture from the soon-to-be-deleted blog) below:


 Introduction

 Sometimes a person just needs a place to write and not-care - not care about who will read, who will approve, whose feelings will be hurt, or who will get angry. Sometimes a person needs a place to write where he doesn't have to worry about anything at all. He needs a place to vent, rant, bellyache, and/or ponder, without worrying about who'll bring up the whole thing about how it's not pleasant to be negative or about how it's not smart not to care about traffic, what Google "likes" (or what anybody else likes or doesn't like, for that matter), or whether his writing is interesting and/or useful to anyone. That's what this site is.

Be forewarned: Don't expect anything great, or even good (although I do like to think that the grammar and spelling here will be reasonably good most of the time). You can expect honesty and a decent amount of candor. That's about all I can promise regarding what's to come. (By the way, I really don't live with the "Attitude" that my words and tone here might seem to suggest. The "Attitude" is really only the mood I'm in as I write this introduction. I'm most often a perfectly nice and friendly person. (Correction: I'm most often a perfectly nice and friendly person who is better able to hide the minor-but-ever-present "Attitude".)

Then there was the "About This Blog" section.   Again, keep in mind that it was written a few years ago.
For the last "I-don't-know-how-long", I've had some extra time, mainly because I haven't had as much work as I'd previously had. The good side to that, of course, is that there has been all the more time for writing. What's amazed me, however, is that I haven't used the time to do some of the serious writing that I've been wishing I had time to write. Instead, because I couldn't really get down to business and just do the writing I need to do, I found myself sitting and staring at the screen for ridiculous amounts of time.

I'd take breaks by going to HubPages (where I've been spending free time over the last few years), and seeing if I'd run into something that gave me an idea to write about (and completely unrelated to what I really should have doing).

Well, I got lots of ideas, so I'd then write up a storm and produce some really thorough (even good, maybe) thing on a subject - only to then just leave the file to sit in my machine because a) I don't want to get involved with figuring out where it will fit well, and b) I'd just be tired after writing that I couldn't deal with anything other than closing the file.

So, this has been going on for awhile. Then there was the power failure from the hurricane. That meant I took a few days off from it all, which was, in its own way, good. One day I killed the morning and part of the afternoon, out in the sun and getting exercise. I thought that helped some, and maybe it did. Well, it helped me "overall", but it didn't help me get back to being focused on what I could easily have completed by now. So, I've been in a slump.

Then, for the last couple of days it got worse. I couldn't even go looking for stuff to write. All I could do was go see if there was something on the HubPages forums that might give me an idea for writing. There wasn't. There was nothing (well, nothing inspiring, to say the least). That's when I went to HubPages "Answers" section and just looked for questions that I could entertain myself with by trying to come up with an answer. Better that than some what's on television. So there I saw for close to two solid days (I did take breaks and did try to get some other, smaller, things done in-between), answering a bunch of questions for no real reason other than to a) kill time, and b) not have to do anything more demanding.

Nature has a way of taking care of some things. In this case, "Nature's" way of taking care of things was apparently that I'd be so disgusted with the fact that I would even want to waste two days/nights (well, not really the WHOLE days or nights, but - really - far more time than is reasonable or healthy) doing my version of "nothing".

I know I'm exhausted (for reasons that have nothing to do with a) online writing, or b) things within my control at the moment. I'm angry about a whole lot of things that have happened in my life (mainly because they have been caused by someone else - and YES, you really CAN blame others for SOME things SOME times if you're not so stupid, weak, or lacking in self-esteem that you either don't know that, or else don't have the good sense and guts to implement it.

In any case, I said to myself, "Self, you've been having the life sucked out of you by the Internet (and some other, non-writing/non-Internet-related factors). Get yourself to a clean, white, page. Get away from that stupid mess of stupid blogs that you've never finished fully developing, and get yourself away from someone else's writing site where you're wondering if you've ever really belonged, let alone if your stuff, as it now is, belongs there at this point."

I also said to myself, "Self, get away from where you're going to see some people's truly hostile and ignorant remarks about any number of things (and not even directed at you, by the way). It's not healthy to soak in nothing but the following: blogs you hate anyway, writing you mostly hate anyway, an Internet you're not too thrilled with anyway (at least most of the time), and sites where the talk is all about struggling for traffic, new ways to "improve quality", foolish arguments about politics and religion, and a whole lot of things that a whole lot people do for no reason other than hope to make a nickle here or there.

Self, you've always been able to ignore, laugh off, or take in stride all those little things that are bound to bother most people at one time or another (and especially in large doses). So, Self, get away from it all; but don't turn off your computer, the way you did the day you went out in the sun. Instead, find a blank, white, page and just say or write whatever you feel like saying or writing."

And so, always someone to listen to my wisest (????) adviser (although I've been known to ignore her far longer than has often been ideal), I took my own advice. Here I am, and there you have it.

A guest is coming over later, so I probably don't have enough time to write much of anything right now. What will I write on here? I don't know, but the freedom offered by the blank, white, page and a simple keyboard makes me feel a little better already.






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