So, yesterday I was feel a bit “funk-y.” The weather was gross; I was frustrated with my lack of things to do; I let myself get all whiny; and then I wrote about it. But after I wrote, I started to feel a bit better. And I scrolled back through some of my other recent blog posts, and realized, I’ve been in a funk for awhile. Maybe not every day, repeatedly, but certainly often when I’m writing to you fine folks.
But I do notice that the weight lifts a bit when I write.
And I thought to myself, “Hey….maybe you need to be doing this more frequently? like, maybe every day?”
But then the gross voices in my head said, “Blech! who in their right mind would want to hear what you have to say every day? Yuck! You’ll lose readers, hon. It won’t be pretty.”
And then something surprising happened. The cool, super-awesome voices, answered back, “Who the fuck cares? They’re big kids. They can decide whether or not they want to read what you have to say every day. And if they don’t want to hear it, well – tough shit. They don’t have to read it! You write for yourself so stop worrying about what others think.”
Well, that kinda pissed off the gross voices, ’cause they hate to be argued with. And so they retorted, “Sweetheart, you won’t be able to come up with something to write every day. You’re boring. Your life is boring. You can barely come up with something to write once a week, and you’re thinking of doing this every day? Gimme a break.”
Right. Well, you can imagine what this did to the cool, super-awesome voices. They came up with this rad response: “Seriously?!? Seriously?!? Did you just say that?? You have tons of stuff to say! And it doesn’t always have to be stuff like, ‘oh wow, look at me living my life! Pay attention to me and all the mega-important things I have to say!’ In fact, you can write about absolutely nothing if you choose to! You could write about your favourite cheese (Boursin, by the way)! You could write about the insano-flushing toilets in Starbucks! You could write about that wiggity-wack dream you had last night! You could write about the imaginary conversations that you have with those voices in your head!”
Which brings us to this post. See you tomorrow.
Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone for their incredible support of my Turning Crisis into Quest series! I’ve enjoyed putting these posts together and have been thrilled by the feedback so far.
So, it’s come to my attention recently that I’m being a little irresponsibly inspiring. One of my primary reasons for starting this blog six months ago (holy crap – six months ago!!!) was that I wanted to create a place where 20- and 30-somethings could go to find inspiration, ideas and help in their quarterlife crises. I wanted to put my story out there so that others might realize that they’re not alone and that each and every one of us really has it within ourselves to live the lives we want. For me, that meant quitting my job.
For some reason, I do most of my best writing in the afternoon. I spend my morning catching up on emails, phone calls, housework and other “work” type things. I even try to schedule any appointments and meetings in the morning. Then I have lunch, watch some mindless tv for half an hour, and reward myself with an afternoon of catching up on my blog reading and writing my own blog posts. I think I need to clear my mind of all the things I “have” to do before I can start doing the things I “want” to do, guilt free.
Since launching my own blog, I’ve started following dozens of other blogs and I gotta say, sometimes I feel like I’m reading the same blog posts over and over and over again. I never realized there were SO MANY self-help, find-your-passion, The-Secret-will-change-your-life blah-blah-blah blogs out there and here I am, trying to carve out a niche for myself by writing on the same topics. Brilliant. Sigh.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not drunk every time I write. In fact, I don’t think I’ve written drunk yet (but I’ll let you know if I do). And I don’t think we all need to become raging alcoholics just to figure out our life’s passion. But think about the last time you got really into a conversation (drunk or not) – what were you talking about? What could you not shut up about?