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| This is the house I'm going to live in when I stop procrastinating and get a real job |
No. This time, blogging was about to happen, and it was about to happen to me. Well, that's what I thought. Here's how that Mind Conversation panned out.
(I'll give you a hint: not very well.)
I was ready. Boy, was I ready, armed with my cup of tea and my obligatory
silver-foil covered biscuit. I had absolutely no messages on my phone. I had no
pressing concerns to be concerned about. I had my cardi on. I even had A Place
By The Sea on mute in the background. At that moment, you could have accused me
of being pathetic. You could have accused me of being overly preoccupied with
whether or not a foil-covered biscuit really was the way to go, when an equally
tempting Mikado was peering out of the tin. But you could not have accused me
of not being what I most certainly was- ready.
And?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I sat in front of my laptop and I realised, not for the first time in my life, that I had nothing to say.
I sat there for a while. I sat there for another while. And then I started to doubt my very existence. Could it be that I really have no thoughts on anything? Do I not care about something? Is there nothing that I have to say to the world? Nothing at all?
Apparently not. I officially had no opinions to share with the rest of the world. My blank blog page confirmed it. I was not a blogger. I had no thoughts. I was a failure.
But I wasn’t going to take that failure lying down. No, son. I decided instead that I would be a Specific Blogger. That is, I would be an expert in some kind of field.
The only problem was, I wasn’t an expert in any field.
What could I blog about? What did other people blog about? Other people blogged about fashion, I thought. They write about fashion. You know. Clothes. Glasses. Chanel. Fashion bloggers are cool. They have polaroid cameras and they take pictures of stuff. The last thing I took a photo of was a sign that said GORILLA CORROSION on it. I don’t know what GORILLA CORROSION is, but it was written on a van, and I thought it was funny.
Based on that evidence alone, I could tell that fashion blogging wasn’t going to be the thing for me.
Then I thought, what about a music blog? Could that be a thing? I like music. I could write about music! That would be easy. But- hold on- what do music writers actually talk about? Beats? The rhythm section? The guitar at the chorus? The way the song betrays latent influences of mid–to-late Jethro Tull?
Sadly, I didn’t think I had enough ‘street knowledge’ to pull off music- the coolest of all blogs. So I gave up on that one, too, and kept listening to All Saints on my eight-year-old ipod, a piece of equipment that immediately ruled out the possibility of me writing a tech blog.
I was running out of options. I was running out of options the way a trout runs out of ocean when it’s about to be caught by a trawler or some other industrial boat. And that’s when it hit me. Travel. I could write a damn good travel blog. After all, I had been to lots of places. I had fought with my family in those places. I had fought with my friends in those places. I had probably fought with the hotel porter in those places. I had spent inordinate amounts of money on souvenir t-shirts in those places. And I had gotten horribly sunburnt in those places. Suddenly travel blogging was looking less and less appetising.
Two hours of non-blogging later and I was left, as we all are, in the end, with that most Shakespearian of quotations: to blog or not to blog, that is the question.
And?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I sat in front of my laptop and I realised, not for the first time in my life, that I had nothing to say.
I sat there for a while. I sat there for another while. And then I started to doubt my very existence. Could it be that I really have no thoughts on anything? Do I not care about something? Is there nothing that I have to say to the world? Nothing at all?
Apparently not. I officially had no opinions to share with the rest of the world. My blank blog page confirmed it. I was not a blogger. I had no thoughts. I was a failure.
But I wasn’t going to take that failure lying down. No, son. I decided instead that I would be a Specific Blogger. That is, I would be an expert in some kind of field.
The only problem was, I wasn’t an expert in any field.
What could I blog about? What did other people blog about? Other people blogged about fashion, I thought. They write about fashion. You know. Clothes. Glasses. Chanel. Fashion bloggers are cool. They have polaroid cameras and they take pictures of stuff. The last thing I took a photo of was a sign that said GORILLA CORROSION on it. I don’t know what GORILLA CORROSION is, but it was written on a van, and I thought it was funny.
Based on that evidence alone, I could tell that fashion blogging wasn’t going to be the thing for me.
Then I thought, what about a music blog? Could that be a thing? I like music. I could write about music! That would be easy. But- hold on- what do music writers actually talk about? Beats? The rhythm section? The guitar at the chorus? The way the song betrays latent influences of mid–to-late Jethro Tull?
Sadly, I didn’t think I had enough ‘street knowledge’ to pull off music- the coolest of all blogs. So I gave up on that one, too, and kept listening to All Saints on my eight-year-old ipod, a piece of equipment that immediately ruled out the possibility of me writing a tech blog.
I was running out of options. I was running out of options the way a trout runs out of ocean when it’s about to be caught by a trawler or some other industrial boat. And that’s when it hit me. Travel. I could write a damn good travel blog. After all, I had been to lots of places. I had fought with my family in those places. I had fought with my friends in those places. I had probably fought with the hotel porter in those places. I had spent inordinate amounts of money on souvenir t-shirts in those places. And I had gotten horribly sunburnt in those places. Suddenly travel blogging was looking less and less appetising.
Two hours of non-blogging later and I was left, as we all are, in the end, with that most Shakespearian of quotations: to blog or not to blog, that is the question.
At that time I picked not, but then I found that writing something about anything was the way my blog was going to go. I wasn't going to have a niche. Or a theme. I was just going to get it started, and that's how I found myself sort of maybe getting near Life Goal number one: getting it started.
Then again, I found this during a three-hour session of procrastinating.
Maybe I haven't gotten round to getting it started, then.
Bon blog!
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