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....

Saturday, March 5, 2016

What A Bunch of Junk...

So much of my online writing is junk, and yet there are reasons I haven't just deleted all the junk (yet).  One reason I have so much "blah blah"/junk-writing is that I'd signed up with so many "writing sites" that made a big deal about how they were written by (my term) "any-old-body", and they told people to write about what they knew about.

With a few of those sites I'd go looking for something like a question or a title and then see what I came up with.  I stayed away from subjects I didn't think I had any business offering my thoughts on, and I'd look for subjects that I could "answer" (or just write about) as if I were having a conversation with a friend.  The thing was, however, that while I certainly aimed to try to offer what I thought was reasonably solid input on the subject/question, I had this thing that whoever or whatever posted the "idea" wasn't necessarily going to stay around to see any replies.  So, I kind of wildly wrote my one-sided input to these discussions only partially believing that anyone was going to actually read what I wrote.  Some things came out better than others (usually depending on the subject and/or my approach to it).  While I actually did (as Google has put it) "write for reader" I didn't entirely always believe there would actually be a reader.  Basically, all these little elements to the making of any piece of writing meant the result was often half-baked (or something like that, and in one way or another).

It was merciful when so many of those "writing sites" closed down.  My mistake was that most offered users/members the chance to copy all their stuff before the site shut down, and I did that. That meant I had a bunch of stuff and no site to post it on, so it seemed (at the time) to make sense to re-post that stuff on a blog of my own.  That was then.  This is now.  Even with that, however, a huge number of those things I saved aren't going to ever be  posted anywhere again.

Many were, though, and I'm not someone who can have stuff anywhere and not worry about what it looks like to anyone who finds it.  (I've done what I can do to minimize the number of people who may find this stuff, but as long as it's where I can get to it I'm not able to just tell myself that it doesn't matter and then not worry about it.)

It doesn't matter, and yet if I notice that one page or another has nothing on it since, say, four or five yeas ago (or more) I can't help but at least do an "update note" because, again, that's just the kind of person I am (and regardless of whether anyone even sees the thing).

Although I have some things I've written that aren't, I don't think, "blah blah junk", I don't post them because I have ideas about where I'll post them.  Then again, the conflict between whether I ever want to post anything anywhere any more and wanting to post something (somewhere) that isn't "blah blah junk" goes on.

In view of the availability of blogs (namely, this one now) I don't necessarily mind having one place on which to post whatever I feel like posting (and as infrequently as I feel like posting anything).  It's the big-mess element to what I have online that bothers me.

Earlier today I wrote (yet) another big, long, "blah blah junk" thing.  What's more, when I finished writing THAT one I wrote (again, yet) another one (but decided not to post it after all)
I have to kind of laugh as I think, "Someone, stop me!"

The whole problem is really that I'm often fighting off "an exhaustion thing" (for reasons I won't go into here).  So, that means that don't have the energy it takes to put together some of the things I have in mind for writing (that I think - no, know - are fairly worthwhile).  They're subjects I take seriously and will not write about unless/until I have the energy to do them well.  In some cases they're subjects that involve quite a bit of sorting out before even starting to approach them.  As I said, I'm fighting off some "exhaustion thing" and not really up to approaching the more serious (and less embarrassing) material.

So, I live with ever-present urge to delete all this "blah blah junk" stuff and start clean (or not start again online at all).  But, there are those reasons that I don't yet feel comfortable deleting everything quite yet; and while I'd very much just like to write about those reasons I don't feel comfortable doing that either.

Hmm.  Maybe I changed my mind about that second bout of "blah blah junk" that I wrote earlier today and will post it after all.

Years ago I wrote a little verse, 'That Thing I Need To Write".  It occurs to me tonight that, maybe instead of yet more "blah blah junk" posts I should maybe write a new verse, "All The Things I Wish I Hadn't Felt Compelled To Write"; or maybe I should write a proper but standard web article about why writers shouldn't listen to anyone who says (essentially) "write anything".

For now, let me go find that second "blah blah junk" post that I didn't post.

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